It seems like it should go without saying for a book about zombies, but Zone One is bleak. Unexpectedly bleak. It is at times reminiscent of [a:Cormac McCarthy|4178|Cormac McCarthy|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1414695980p2/4178.jpg] generally, and [b:The Road|6288|The Road|Cormac McCarthy|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1439197219s/6288.jpg|3355573] specifically. It is bleak in the ways you expect -- dead people eat living people's faces -- but also in ways you don't expect. And it is also by turns hopeful and funny.

Zone One has a reputation as "the literary zombie novel," and it's a well earned reputation. For one thing, it's extremely well written. Colson Whitehead's prose is a joy to read: accessible enough to pull you in and keep you moving, but complex enough to let you work up a bit of a sweat. And the trail is dotted with perfectly constructed turns of phrase that will stop you in your tracks and make you reach for your pen to underline them.

And, like any work of literature, Zone One isn't actually about what it's about. Sure, it's about zombies, but it's also about the way that life is terrible, and stupid, and absurd, and, in stolen moments, beautiful. It's about the ways we grapple with our pasts and chase our futures. It's about the ways we relate to each other and to ourselves. It's about the primal essence of our humanity, and it's about the layers and layers of culture and government and economy that we stack atop that essence.

Like any good book, Zone One doesn't just tell a story; it offers a lens through which you can regard the world around you. Maybe it'll be a tender moment two people share while they take refuge from the horrors outside, maybe it'll be a sharply satirical passage about this nascent society's ad hoc government issuing its latest set of regulations, maybe it'll be the way some characters react to the utter hopelessness of life in this new world, or maybe it'll be the way characters wax poetic about the totemic sources of their hope -- but something, or probably many things, will grab you and burrow into you until you realize that you live in this world Whitehead is writing about.

And, like any good book, Zone One is just goddamn good.

unfortunately one of those books that uses a lot of Big Words and Slick Phrasing to mask that there's not much going on. very shallow re: plot and characters, unsatisfying in its incredibly slow-drag towards a conclusion, and honestly, i really can't even say what it's about, it feels so hollow. i don't need a book to be profound and leave a lasting impression to enjoy it but there's hardly even an action sequence that manages to excite.