Zone One

Whitehead takes a literary approach to the zombie apocalypse in this novel, and the most interesting aspect is his depiction of American capitalism's attempt at self-resuscitation through the deployment of propaganda. Gathers momentum as you progress, leading the reader through a labyrinthine, convoluted plot.

Colson Whitehead's post-apocalyptic tragic-comedy was my first experience with the "zombie novel." I wouldn't say that this novel was my first and last attempt with this genre; however, I will definitely proceed with caution before investing myself in another similar novel. As a newcomer to the bleak Zombie genre, I found Colson's extremely slow narrative movement, with seemingly no plot, and use of highly genre specific language, to be a huge barrier of entry to his novel. My inability to connect to the book,which may be due to my general indifference to the genre as a whole, is obvious in the three-and-a-half pages of notes to understand and keep up with the diction within the first 100 pages. I couldn't appreciate, or even detect, Whitehead's dark humor because I was too overwhelmed with trying to figure out the difference between a skel and straggler. If I couldn't connect with the plot line, I at least expected to connect with the character's through their nostalgic recollections of the recognizable past. To my surprise, and dismay, I didn't care about the fate of Mark Spitz or any other character at the end of the book.

Despite my own issues connecting with Zone One, this book does take a unique stance on the subject of dystopian society. In addition, I did enjoy Whitehead's way of connecting aspects of his futuristic society with attitudes and feelings that are contemporaneous.

Truly a literary zombie novel. You get infected hordes, you get stories of survival, apocalyptic collapse, man's efforts to rebuild, and you get true character development and MEANING. A meditation on the emptiness of modern life, and what it is to be human, to have memory. Loved it.

This author really likes adjectives and metaphors. And tangents. I'm sure this meant to be an interesting story of survival, but lost its way in a slurry of narrative, POV, & local color ... I'm sorry ... what were we talking about?

Pretentious. Frustrating. Convoluted. And, no real character development.

The great concept and premise is lost in a writing style that is both alienating and confusing. If only he had chosen a more direct style, I really do think this novel could have been truly great.

Reading SCi-FI was anew experience for me. But because the author is a black man I decided to go with him to a) support black writers. and b) see how blacks would be portrayed in sci-fi. Iwas disappointed when he deveoted and entire page to one black alien only to insult the infected black woman. I feel like writers that are black should be sensitive to how they portray other ppl of color, because we have such a hard time as it is. But in order to get an audience for your lit, you have to insult ppl of color because the stigma says (a) blks dnt read sci-fi (or anything else for that matter) and (b) whites are only interested in blk lit when there is something derogatory about blacks in it. it feeds the frenzy for racial bigotry that line the authors pockets. but I read it to the end. it wasn't that interesting

This is my first experience with both Colson Whitehead and the zombie genre as a whole, and I must say I wasn't extraordinarily impressed. I went into the novel expecting an epic of human triumph over suffering, heroes and heroines with thoughts and feelings remarkable enough to rival or even exceed the absurdity of the premise of the book. After all, wouldn't a zombie apocalypse, if anything, merit the development of a new valor or honor or compassion among the living? I assumed that in a novel populated by zombies, an author would strive to animate the human characters more thoroughly than the reanimated undead. I felt Whitehead making an effort to do this at some points, but these occasions were few and far between, occasional breaths of fresh air. For instance, we get brief glimpses into the past lives of certain characters that makes them *almost* compelling. However, more often, Whitehead's descriptions drove me to want more about individual zombies than the protagonist, whose only defining trait appears to be his intense mediocrity.All this is to say that it seems at times that Whitehead neglects the humanity of his humans in favor of humanizing the zombies.
After it is established that the city has been overrun by zombies and the reader has enough information to situate him or herself in the action, the plot becomes incredibly dull. For the first two thirds of the novel, the driving question is how Mark Spitz, the protagonist, got his name. I won't ruin the motivation for reading the greater part of the book by answering that question for you here. For me, the redeeming quality of this book was the prose. Whitehead is a strong writer with the ability to draw metaphors and similes that make you really stop and think. He connects ideas, images, and emotions in ways that I haven't seen combined before. Yes, some of them border on ridiculousness, but this is a zombie novel, right? It is clear that Whitehead has a lot more to say about zombies than you can see on the surface. Go into this book as you would engage with a social commentary, and I believe you will have a more favorable opinion of "Zone One" than I do having entered the post-apocalyptic world expecting a story about that which makes us human instead of a story without that which makes us human.

Mr. Colson Whithead, the first few pages of your "novel" were such a delight to read. Especially dealing with the "end of the world/ zombie" theme. That being said. You only achieved in creating an annoying character that the only true emotion I invested into him was that of me wanting to punch his light's out! Also, as I kept reading I felt as if this novel was just a pathetic way to convey to the reader how intelligent you are. Yes we all know you are very smart. Yes we are proud of you, Colson.
A true novel, I believe, is The Road. It left a lasting effect on me. I purchased Zone One thinking it will be in the same caliber as The Road. Boy was I wrong...

Colson Whitehead's Zone One is a loving tribute to the last forty years of zombie related popular culture, and the author positions it in such a way that his influences (largely horror filmmakers like Romero and Carpenter) are instantly apparent to the reader. This is when the novel is at its best. Whitehead is capable of painting a vivid picture of the zombie apocalypse and the fundamental ways that once the world descends into survival mode it can never truly go back. This B-movie influence also means that Zone One is filled with the same societal critiques leveled by horror directors like Romero thirty years ago. Unfortunately, ironic jabs at consumerism don't really hold the same weight in 2011, particularly when the cynical reader might interpret Zone One as a cash-in of its own, considering the current commercial landscape surrounding the zombie phenomenon.

Heavy-handed Romero regurgitation aside, Zone One tends to suffer from a pacing that is almost unforgivable in the kind of genre story that it's attempting to tell. The novel's 260 pages takes place over the course of three days in New York, supplemented with copious flashbacks to the protagonist, Mark Spitz's, efforts to survive following the Last Night. Nothing really happens until the final thirty pages. Then things kind of happen. Quickly and vaguely. The audience that this novel is aiming at, the hardcore horror enthusiast, will find not only nothing new in Zone One, but nothing new at an alarmingly slow pace.

It's left straddling the line between a "literary" novel and a "genre" novel, but it doesn't quite do either satisfactorily. It has some very pretty description and excellent atmosphere. Even the characters are often engaging, though they tend to feel frozen in time in a way that continues to highlight the disappointing pacing. In the end, though, the novel ends up in most sections being boring. And say what you will about zombies, they are not supposed to be boring.

I just finished reading "Zone One" for the second time. It was just as good and by that, I mean just as readable, at times even poetic, just as touching, just as entertaining. To be sure, this is a dark, dark novel. Yes, it is also verbose at times. Other times, however, it is pitch-perfect in its wry humor (including a single reference to the undead feeling "peckish), matter-of-fact horror and use of back story to hint at broader happenings throughout the soon-to-be post-apocalyptic world. I understand this is not to everyone's taste. It definitely was to my taste, though. I thought it interesting that the star ratings seemed pretty evenly divided down the line. I haven't seen tat this has been optioned for a movie yet, but it would make a potentially great one. One that I would probably go back and see a second time. To Colson Whitehead: thanks and - Damn!

Having trouble sleeping? Forget drugs. This book is the perfect prescription.

I know that sounds aloof, but for me it was the truth. I spent about two months attempting to read this novella back in 2011, but only managed to get about 60 pages into it. I kept falling asleep scant minutes after cracking open the cover.

On a recent vacation to the mountains out of cell and broadcast range (and during a rainstorm) I finally managed to get through the other 200, but it is not something I would recommend as worthwhile. It would be easy to give this a 1 Star rating, but I reserve that shame for truly horrible material of the likes of 2009's "Land of the Lost" or sitcoms along the lines of CBS's current "We Are Men." Well, any CBS sitcom to tell the truth but I digress.

I get the impression that the author is really proud of himself and his vocabulary. The word "pretentious" finds its way into many reviews on here and it is a well earned moniker. I am college educated and dabbled in writing myself, but it seemed as though two pages could not pass by without my learning a new 12 letter word.

This makes the actual joy of reading a chore. Beyond his Thesaurus abuses, Whitehead's actual sentences flow like diseased mud, never pulling you into the rhythm of the story. It feels like plodding through an endless essay in the back of some overly dry and clinical science magazine. "Literature" does not have to be this painful. ("Every other store on the block ministered to some yuppie lack, bent toward the local demographic sun and absorbing into its capillaries imported kitchen implements and upscale children's accoutrements." Page 224. Just flows off your mental tongue, doesn't it?) Whitehead will also laboriously elucidate for pages and pages about the inner workings, history and politics behind an incinerator but purposely fail to describe what a character looks like just so he can pull a GOTCHA! moment on the reader's assumptions near the end. Weaksauce. Sorry Whitehead, Romero beat you to the punch on that 45 years ago.

I also get the impression that this author hates everything: television shows, Capitalism, Starbucks, Halo, The Hard Rock Café, the human condition itself. The only thing that he writes of from a fond perspective via the mind of his protagonist is childhood nostalgia. Oh, and NEW YORK itself of course. Gotta love New York.

A novel should never lose a reader. There are flashbacks within flashbacks that jump backwards forwards and sideways, and at several times I actually lost the thread of the story that represented the present. "Is this six months ago? Just after the zombie outbreak? Two weeks ago? Where are we in the stor-ah! There's a familiar character. We must be in the present." Anchors such as that should not be necessary.

If you like Zombie stories, there are much better ones out there. "World War Z", "The Zombie Survival Guide" or "The Walking Dead" in all its myriad forms from comic to television to video game are all excellent. If you like end of the world stories pick up King's "The Stand", or McCammon's "Swan Song", or Cronin's "The Passage", or McCarthy's "The Road." (Whitehead could take a hint from Cormac on how to write "literature" with beautiful vocabulary AND tell a compelling tale.)

"Zone One" is an over-written, bloated short story painfully stretched to novel length. Stay away unless you are suffering from insomnia or out of the reach of civilization's many other lures.

I never expected a book about flesh eating zombies to read so slowly. Don't get me wrong, the prose is beautiful and this is a good book to read if you want to rack you brain and pick at the far and seldom used corners of our vocabulary. But if you want to rad a thriller, or a page-turner, then this is not the novel for you. Oddly enough, I've become somewhat of a fan of Whitehead, just not this story. I would buy this book if you want a more literary take on the Zombie scene, but don't expect to be too entertained.

At times, a surprisingly light-hearted view into our lives and constant mocking of the state of Connecticut. I've read some reviews deriding Mark Spitz as just an average and unmemorable protagonist but, obviously, that's exactly what Whitehead intended. A glimpse into a post-plague world through the lens of a perfectly nondescript and average human being. I could have done without some of the long-winded literary descriptions but overall felt it was a good read.

If you like your writing florid and your narrative contemplative, with a zombie twist this is for you. I'm sorta done with the whole zombie craze, so this novel was the perfect way to finish. A post-zombie apocalypse zombie novel. Yum.

A very articulate zombie novel, fast paced, poignant, cynical and filled with seething social commentary. I loved this book and the characters and wanted to know more of everything. Very well done, one of the best of the genre, in my opinion.

Best zombie book ever. For me, this beats those typical books like The Passage and the Twelve, which seem tostart out pretty possible and then just go off a cliff of plausibility. This applies also to World War Z (maybe it's the movie I'm reacting to). Of course, the idea that dead bodies, dead brains, can walk around and eat people, "hear" noise, "smell" blood, "see" movement, is pretty far-fetched. Which is why it's interesting that the trend has such sharp teeth ha ha.
In any case, this book, by a very literate and thoughtful writer, seems very close to what it could/would actually be like, shoudl such an impossibility come to pass. The book includes a terrifying twist of evolution of the virus and its impact near the end, that really makes the book scary enough to keep you up at night. It begins by dropping the reader right into the action, at the middle of the final stands against the enormous mass of zombies in Manhattan several years after the initial crisis, with a very interesting, slightly shut down character who's been through a great deal of combat action in the crisis.
I generally read these as "palate cleansers" in between more serious books, but I ended up taking this book seriously, and the writer more so. If you like literate zombie books and don't care much about happy endings, I'd definitely get this one.

Man what rote book like big words and structure of confuse. Big words no belong een zombee book. Righter man is no good. Is like Cormac McCarthy person who use fancy language no belo ng een western novel. Eef u smart like me u stay away dis book. Eef u dum, u by book.

Too wordy and rambling. It is like having a Harvard Graduate describe mud wrestling. I am a King fan so long walk ups dont bother me but this is worse than when a preacher says, "and now in closing" for the 8th time.

Colson Whitehead has crafted an original & engaging tale which props up the very tired subgenre of zombie fiction. The reader is granted 3 days in the mind of Mark Spitz as he journeys from war weary survivor thru a hallucinatory illness and beyond. Rather than an action tale bouncing from crisis to crisis, Whitehead chose to give us a man whose musings drive the story. Like our own remembrances (if we tell the truth) Spitz's thoughts fall in maddeningly random order - disjointed, conflicting, and eventually quite mad as disease takes over his mind. This is character driven fiction at its finest.

For those who want bloody gore with a non-stop storyline, goodness knows there are many fine novels (zombie and otherwise) on the market. But this slower paced ramble through one man's flawed vision makes for a fascinating alternative. 5 stars -

Tediuos is the word. the internal monologue in Mark Sptiz head is mind numbing to read.
ebooks definately have the advantage for skimining. The last few pages should be the opening few pages
no plot i was zombiefied by the end.

I like zombie stories and I was really looking forward to reading this book, which made me even more disappointed after the first thirty pages to find that the story was largely inaccessible. Inaccessible because of the much too elevated diction, the slow-moving pace, and the total lack of plot. The same post-apocalyptic zombie storyline is there, but there wasn't enough zombie action to keep me interested through Whitehead's verbose language. The characters were too stuck daydreaming about the past, which is a good idea in theory that creates an interesting and relatable theme about nostalgia, but Whitehead is so heavy-handed with it that the story has difficulty moving forward in time. It's almost as if Whitehead attempted to reform the zombie novel with a literary hand, but in effect, he overcompensated and ruined both the literary and genre aspects of what could have been a really cool book.

Colson Whitehead's most recent novel has received both extremely positive and extremely negative reviews. In my opinion, although it was well written, it was my first go at a post-apocalyptic zombie novel and I can't say it's my favorite genre.

This book took me far too long to get through, and I never fully got into it. It seemed like every time the action started, it came to a screeching halt while Mark Spitz headed into a downward spiral of reflection of the good old days when the world wasn't overrun with flesh-eating monsters. These moments simply make the book longer than it needs to be and take away from what could be an exciting and action packed adventure novel.

In the future, I doubt that I will take another go at reading a zombie novel, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is into the zombie fad.

The author offers a fresh and imaginative look at America trying to rebuild after a zombie plague. The main character is interesting; a sagely sardonic, existential anti-hero. The opening of the book offers brillant prose not seen in this genre. Unfortunately, however, the narrative bogs down with heavily ladened social commentary and observations of pre-plague American society - to the point of almost grinding to a complete halt. The storyline rallys in the final pages to a hectic end. Overall, an enjoyable read, but this novel did not reach its full potential. Still, I hope for a sequel, as the main character is compelling, and the author's descriptive prose (minus the angst-filled observations on present-day society), is enjoyable to read.

Capitalizing on the current zombie craze taking over popular culture, Colson Whitehead's Zone One is a surprisingly wonderful and well-written novel. The entirety of the narration takes place across three days, with flashbacks filling in critical information that has already happened in the past. This makes for a very interestingly structured work, where the reader occasionally finds that they are so deeply enveloped within the story that they forget actions twenty pages apart actually occurred one after another. Zone One is fast-paced, yet it does not over stimulate the reader by barraging him or her with constant action. The insight that Whitehead offers into the mind of the main character, Mark Spitz, is truly a treat in an action-based novel. Although the zombie theme may seem immediately skewed toward a male readership, this novel is completely universal in its entertainment value and can be appreciated by a wide variety of readers.

If i wanted to appear sophisticated, i would rave about this book and how it is well written and artistic, but when i read a book, i like a story to follow and to see characters develop, and oh yeah, for the book to end. But i dont care what anyone thinks, so here's the scoop. This book was boring, had no plot, and the ending sucked. Maybe you can have your cake and eat it too with a literary zombie novel, but this isnt it. Just a book where nothing happens. Read it for yourself and see...or better yet, don't.

If Whitehead's intention was to recreate in the reader what happens to the infected, then this is a work of genius. It certainly made me feel brain dead. I can only reiterate what other reviews have noted: the book is tedious and over written. Whitehead's use of absurdly big words becomes a distraction making it difficult to follow what is already a poorly constructed story. In some ways, I think the author's editor let him down. Given more reflection, I think he could have crafted a fine narrative, but the endless tropes about the world as it used to be are repetitive and not particularly insightful. This book stands in stark contrast to Marcel Theroux's "Far North", a novel set in a crumbling world that is full of beauty, grace, and simple pared down prose.

This is written like one long meandering run-on sentence. All Pretention with no action. Interesting creative writing but the fatal flaw is that it's just boring so I put it down after the first chapter.

This author's writing is consumed with descriptions. I kept thinking "just get to the point!" I enjoy a good story. This is just a book written by an author wishing to show off his verbal prowess. Disappointing.

I would not recommend this to anyone looking for a zombie apocalypse book. There's not much action, or story for that matter, and when there is, it is usually glossed over. The way he writes was extremely annoying to me. He can't just come out and state something. He has to phrase it in a way that no one talks or thinks. I did finish it but many times I just wanted to chuck it out the window. When I did finish it, I propelled the tome in the excess leftovers.

I literally wanted to throw this book against the wall every time I picked it up to read a few pages. A single thought is excruciatingly explained for 5 pages going back to the lead characters childhood while you wait to find out what will happen next. The author must have some friends at Esquire and other media outlets. While reading the book I honestly started to wonder if there was some sort of bribe paid to the big media reviewers.

If this was an exercise in frustrating your readers. Congrats.