“Zone One” by Colson Whitehead (Reviewed by William Henderson)

I hate scary movies. And roller coasters. And certainly movies, scary or otherwise, in which a roller coaster plays any sort of role. I don’t watch The Walking Dead, and I haven’t read any of the & Zombies or Vampire Hunter or other types of books in which moments of gore and, well, zombies (or vampires) are woven into classics (Pride & Prejudice). I can appreciate the time and place for these types of books, but these types of books are not for me.

I was wary approaching Colson Whitehead’s Zone One. I enjoy him as a writer (Sag Harbor, John Henry Days), and have spent time exploring his sentences, trying not to get lost along the way. I’ve even had the chance to listen to him read. But when I read that he had written a literary zombie story, I was wary. And I remain wary, even after finishing the book and letting it settle for a while.

The zombies are your typical zombies, and the survivors have survived for your typical reasons, and America is slowly reclaiming itself (the titular Zone One is the way in which survivors refer to Manhattan), and we have a hero and this hero has friends and people – and zombies – die and people live and Whitehead manages to make zombies literary, which is to say that the zombies are not zombies for the sake of being zombies, but are zombies for a much bigger reason – what are we left with when we suffer through – and occasionally survive – a cataclysmic occurrence.

I lied earlier. I was more than wary approaching Zone One (but I never wavered in my interest, if only to see Whitehead failed). I was prepared to hate Zone One. And I think I hated parts of it. Certainly knives being cleaned of gore aren’t on my list of favorite things. And falling for certain characters and watching as these characters die isn’t on my list of favorite things. And even the zombies that populate Whitehead’s world – or, really, our world – aren’t on my list of favorite things, but I think what might get lost along the way as reviews come out is that Whitehead manages to bring together desperate ideas – zombies and, well, literature – and does so expertly.

I’ll be disappointed if, in the next few years, other literary stories of desolate endings and the living dead multiply on already overcrowded bookshelves, but I’m fully prepared for that inevitability. Literature is dying. You’ve heard the rumors. Brick-and-mortar shops closing every day and e-readers multiplying like Gremlins (just don’t get your e-reader wet or feed it after midnight) and all that may survive are these types of stories because, let’s face it, zombies sell. As do vampires. And werewolves.

I just hope that the next couple of decades don’t prove that the living dead are books that no one reads and stories about which no one cares and characters, once beloved; now not, just because these books don’t include pivotal world-ending moments where, on one side, formerly alive men and women face-off against battle-weary men and women with only one side expected to survive.