"Zone One" by Colson Whitehead

259 pages

An epidemic has ravaged Earth, sorting humanity into two types: the living and the living dead. Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuild­ing civilization. Their top mission is the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully cleared the island south of Canal Street—aka Zone One—but pockets of plague-ridden squatters remain. While the army has eliminated the most dangerous of the infected, teams of civilian volunteers are tasked with clearing out a more rare kind of zombie—the “malfunctioning” stragglers, who exist in a catatonic state, lingering in a place from their former lives. Mark Spitz is a member of one of the civilian teams work­ing in lower Manhattan. This novel takes place over three days, alternating between flashbacks of Spitz’s desperate fight for survival during the worst of the outbreak and his present situation.

I enjoyed this book, but not as much as most zombie stories I've read. Perhaps Colson Whitehead is just too smart for me, or my brain has been dumbed down by other stuff I've been reading lately, but I had trouble following this story and keeping track of what was going on. However, I think it's beautifully written, and I often got caught up in a paragraph just by the way it sounded (maybe this distracted me and was another reason why I had trouble keeping up with the plot...). I also like the idea of the "stragglers," who are unlike the undead I've seen in any other book. This is definitely a unique story, and perhaps I just need to read it again to see if I get a better grasp on it.