I’m not sure if Zone One by Colson Whitehead is actually a Pulitzer Prize winner or not, but I can tell you one thing: I’ve made it to the 30% mark and I can go no further. I have never been bored so stiff by a zombie novel in all my days—and I’ve read a lot of zombie novels.
This meandering, overwritten, richly-prosed-but-empty-on-characterisation slog has almost killed my love of reading. I’ve been stuck on it for over two months and yet, every time I face the choice between continuing to read or doing literally anything else—including washing dishes—I pick the latter. If that’s not damning, I don’t know what is.
I’ve wasted hours on this book, blaming myself, thinking maybe I was the problem. But no. I am not the problem. This novel is the goddamn problem. I still don’t really know what the story was trying to be about. From what I can gather, there are people living in a post–zombie apocalypse world, “clearing out” buildings of ‘Skels’. (No, I don’t know why they’re called that instead of zombies, and I sincerely hope I never find out.) The main character, Mark Spitz, refers to himself by his full name every single time, which gets old very quickly.
It’s boring. It’s dry. I don’t care about the characters, the plot (what little there is), or the world. I don’t even care enough to try and explain it properly. I just want to move on from this experience and never look back.
One I-don’t-even-cares Five.