I’ve been seeing the phrase “start as you mean to go on” flying around a lot as we collectively, tentatively tiptoe into 2019. 2018 was an utter disaster for me, and although 2019 is better so far – touch would, knock on wood, hug wood – I’m afraid of jinxing myself. I can’t say that I’m glad I read Zombie, and I very much hope it’s not how the year continues in terms of reading or anything else.
I want to add the qualifier, “It’s not a bad book,” but what makes a book bad? I think it’s technically fine, but it’s such a bleak, decaying view into the mind of a killer who is loosely based on Jeffrey Dahmer that I really can’t think who I’d ever recommend it for. It does not have the morbid voyeurism of a true crime book, it’s too utterly disconnected from humanity or normal thought processes to appeal in that way. This was some of the darkest shit I’ve ever read and if it was any longer, there’s no way I would’ve finished it. One particular line about “blue guts” has lodged in my mind and unfortunately, may never leave.
Despite its short length, it starts a little slow, and you start out a little frustrated that it’s skirting around the gory details of what he actually did. Then the second it actually brushes up against those details, you desperately want it to stop. This is one of the only books I’ve ever read that I’ve been unable to eat while reading. I thought maybe after sitting with it a while I’d appreciate it like I usually do when I read a book by a classic author that I didn’t necessarily enjoy while I was reading it, but no. I wish I hadn’t read this. Maybe horror just isn’t my genre, I just hated this. Here’s to better books and a better year!
Joyce Carol Oates is one of those authors that I really want to like, but she just never works for me.
Also, you started your year out by reading AND finishing AND writing a great review- that’s amazing! I hope you continue that <3