The Zero

Jess Walter effectively captures the immediate post-9/11 fears and hopes permeating the United States. At the same time, the book is a tragicomedic/satire of one man's journey through the country as a supposed "hero" cop. Well written and enjoyable despite the gray subject matter,

Let me say first that this novel does not make sense in the way your average novel will. It is probably not as patriotic as anything else you've read that retells the story of 9/11. Or as sympathetic. But it is definitely the most compassionate. THE ZERO tells the story of Brian Remy, a cop who was there when it all happened - and in the subsequent months sees his life begin to unravel as he suffers gaps in his waking consciousness (in much the same way as the main character in the film, MEMENTO). Remy's waking reality is the world gone surreal. Remy can't figure out what's happening to him, and it's nearly impossible to what's real and what's not. Every time things he begins to understand what's going on, he blacks out; and so does the reader. This leads to what is possibly the most introspective novel written in the past ten years. THE ZERO will knock you off your feet. Walter's writing (in the tradition of Kafka) is precise, beautiful, destructive, and even mesmerizing. If this novel doesn't make it into the canon of great American literature, it'll be a crying shame.

I have not finished it yet. Decided better to review before finishing as the end does not always justify the whole of the work. Think Dragnet & The Twilight Zone rolled into a stand up comedy routine. Funny, dark and somewhat like an improv Dewey Redman jazz show. It is a book I can put down, but I still want to pick it up and keep on reading!

A perfect 10. The author takes the reader on a gritty, black edged, rocket fueled ride across the abyss of Ground Zero. And what a ride it is! The audacity of writing a novel loaded with satire and black humor on the outfall of a police officer's dealing with post WTC trauma and the politics of cleanup culminating with the sharp irony of survivorship. And it is just not the WTC site that is being "cleaned up". With a daring writing style and sharp characters that enhance a chaos of events, the author succeeds in creating a brute and edgy novel that rivals Catch 22's theater of the absurd.

What Catch-22 did for Joseph Heller and Slaughterhouse-Five did for Kurt Vonnegut, I suspect The Zero will do for Jess Walter. In what some will view as an act of post-9/11 literary hubris ("The Zero" refers to Ground Zero in New York City), Walter has written a novel of darkly comic genius that is plot-driven, suspenseful, heavy on the dialogue (for which Walter has a remarkable ear), and above all, funny. Sadness, astonishment, absurdity and an exhilarating gallows humor easily coexist in The Zero, all of it rendered in prose that, at times, will take your breath away.