I like a good zombie story. I especially like one that plays a teeny bit with the rules, which this one does. I guess I don't much like one that has a not-so-hidden agenda that I find boring and obvious.
Whitehead lives in NYC. He loves his town. He describes his town, in both its fantasy and its reality, to all and sundry in this book. He is the master of asides, meaning that there is a plot but it is obscured by description. This is my least favorite thing in books, which is probably why I've never been a fan of Joyce or Faulkner or Melville or novelists of that ilk. Perhaps this is my pragmatic nature coming through, but give me plot over poetry any day. Give me Hemingway and be done with it.
So, I love that he separates the zombies into two different types, that he calls them by names that haven't yet been used, that he channels the world as it would exist after this catastrophe (the hopes, the personalities, the obvious violence). This is all fun and engaging. I just wish he hadn't tacked an overwrought love letter on top of it.
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