Zone One

In a novel being hailed as the "thinking person's zombie novel," Mark Spitz patrols Zone One of post-apocalyptic Manhattan, searching for skels (zombies) of both varieties--the violent and the catatonic. He's part of a patrol responsible for clearing the way for surviving humans to return. Narrator Beresford Bennett delivers Spitz's account of events as the character's memory is inspired by found relics. Bennett adopts the existential mood of this novel as Spitz examines the evidence of the former city with deliberate, unsensationalized observations. Bennett's subtly ironic tone controls the narrow range of emotion that reflects the monotony of life on patrol in a civilization that is no longer. J.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

Starred review from June 20, 2011
While the revolution will not be televised, the apocalypse and what comes after, at least according to Whitehead (Sag Harbor), will have sponsors. It will even have an anthem, the brilliantly self-referential "Stop! Can You Hear the Eagle Roar?" (theme from Reconstruction). As we follow New Yorker and perpetual B-student "Mark Spitz" over three harrowing days, Whitehead dumpster dives genre tropes, using what he wants and leaving the rest to rot, turning what could have been another zombie-pocalypse gore-fest into the kind of smart, funny, pop cultureâfilled tale that would make George Romero proud. While many stories in this genre are set in a devastated nowheresville, Whitehead plants his narrative firmly in New York City, penning a love letter to a Manhattan still recognizable after the event referred to only as "Last Night." Far from the solemn affair so often imagined, the apocalypse in Whitehead's hands is filled with the kind of dark humor one imagines actual survivors adopting in order to stave off madness. The author sometimes lets the set pieces he's so good at run long, but otherwise succeeds brilliantly with a fresh take on survival, grief, 9/11, AIDS, global warming, nuclear holocaust, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, Pol Pot's Year Zero, Missouri tornadoes, and the many other disasters both natural and not that keep a stranglehold on our fears and dreams.