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The Zero
by Jess Walter
by Jess Walter
I'm intrigued. I began reading this last night, and it is described as a dark, comic satire on 9/11. The other book I read by Jess Walter, "The Financial Lives of the Poets," was very sweet -- funny, poignant, well-written. It reminded me of Nick Hornby and Tom Perotta, but a bit deeper. So, I'm intrigued by this book because it's definitely much darker. And it's a thriller. Different genre, very different tone. And so far so good...
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Eh. It's hard to say what I thought of this book. I finished it, which says something. But I didn't love it. However, I would describe the book as "ambitious," and I think that perhaps readers from NYC might find more resonance with the book.
As mentioned above, the book is a dark, comic satire on post-9/11 America. The author takes shots at the president, the mayor, law enforcement, lawyers, and commercial enterprises -- basically anyone who capitalized on the event in some way. That's a cynical view of this country's reaction to 9/11 and not one that I actually share. But perhaps someone more directly and deeply affected by 9/11 would find resonance in this theme.
The book has been compared to works of Joseph Heller and Franz Kafka, and there is a clear element of absurdism, as well as a sort of abstract man-against-the-system (or is he?) theme. The most difficult aspect of the book for me was that the protagonist suffers from "gaps" of memory, and so, the book is told in episodes that last a couple of pages at most. For example, the protagonist regains awareness of his surroundings while having a drink at a bar, and you spend a few paragraphs at that bar with him, and then it fades out... and he finds himself holding a gun in an alley, wondering what he's doing there. These brief snapshots grew tedious to me quickly, as did the fact that he was such a hapless and uncompelling narrator -- unaware of what he was doing, how he got anywhere, etc.
That said, I did keep reading, and so, there was something interesting about the book. Not highly recommended, but again, perhaps for someone else it would be a good read.
--
Eh. It's hard to say what I thought of this book. I finished it, which says something. But I didn't love it. However, I would describe the book as "ambitious," and I think that perhaps readers from NYC might find more resonance with the book.
As mentioned above, the book is a dark, comic satire on post-9/11 America. The author takes shots at the president, the mayor, law enforcement, lawyers, and commercial enterprises -- basically anyone who capitalized on the event in some way. That's a cynical view of this country's reaction to 9/11 and not one that I actually share. But perhaps someone more directly and deeply affected by 9/11 would find resonance in this theme.
The book has been compared to works of Joseph Heller and Franz Kafka, and there is a clear element of absurdism, as well as a sort of abstract man-against-the-system (or is he?) theme. The most difficult aspect of the book for me was that the protagonist suffers from "gaps" of memory, and so, the book is told in episodes that last a couple of pages at most. For example, the protagonist regains awareness of his surroundings while having a drink at a bar, and you spend a few paragraphs at that bar with him, and then it fades out... and he finds himself holding a gun in an alley, wondering what he's doing there. These brief snapshots grew tedious to me quickly, as did the fact that he was such a hapless and uncompelling narrator -- unaware of what he was doing, how he got anywhere, etc.
That said, I did keep reading, and so, there was something interesting about the book. Not highly recommended, but again, perhaps for someone else it would be a good read.
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