Colson Whitehead, Zone One
The problem, in a nutshell, is Whitehead’s vocabulary. Dear lord. It’s more unrelenting and out-of-control than any flesh eater it’s describing. As a result, the novel’s sentences are overinflated and arrhythmic. Now, there are obviously worse problems for an author to have—but when it results in writing like “Surely an accident unravelled its miserable inevitabilities ahead and now all was fouled, decelerated, the vehicles syllables in an incantation of misfortune,” you wish Whitehead would spend a little more time with one word in particular: restraint.
Ah, it’s been a while since I picked a fight with the rest of the internet. But if someone out there can explain why I shouldn’t borderline-hate Zone One, I’d be glad to hear it. I could not stand this book.
The above is probably the most pointed paragraph in the review; find it, along with five others, in this week’s Georgia Straight.
Jan 19, 2012