Zone One is a zombie novel. I probably shouldn't even admit this up front but I am one of those folks who cannot hide anything. BUT, it is one of the best written zombie novels I've ever read...not that I've read that many. Zombie novels badly written will never grab me. This is a "literary" zombie novel. But it really is a allegory of contemporay Manhattan an America, as one reviewer pointed out. The survivors trade "Last Night" stories and sturggle with PASD or Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder while the new central government advertises hope in the form of "America Phoenix Rising" campaign.
In an interview the author talks about having zombie dreams since he saw Dawn of the Dead in seventh grade. He had a dream one night when he had guests over that prompted the thought, "Once you put civilzation back together, what do you do with all these zombies? So the book grew from there."
The novel is about one man, whose nickname is Mark Spitz (we never learn his real name) is on a team that removes stragglers in Manhattan's Zone One, a walled off part of the city that the Marines have cleared of the active, dangerous zombies. The stragglers are the afflicted who are stuck in daily life activity...caught like stones in mundane tasks such as fry cook at a Mcdonalds.
The novel is full of dark humor and acute observations of modern life or what is left of it in the light of death and a civilization that may not make it....
It was a bit of slog in parts but the final pages are amazing. Any more said would give too much away. Read it and we'll talk!
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