Zed

Elizabeth McClung's ZED is a marvel. For a debut novel it is astonishingly assured and competent. Perhaps the best first novel I have read since Iain Banks' THE WASP FACTORY. Too much of Canadian fiction is tired, mannered and moribund. ZED is years beyond the usual Can-Lit tapioca that passes for our national literature. Her 13-year old protagonist is tough, likable, a survivor in a world full of adult monsters. Set almost entirely within the confines of an unnamed apartment building in an unnamed city, ZED is claustrophobic, terrifying and, gulp, at times very, very funny. Filled with fascinating characterizations and unforgettable imagery. Published by a small press on Canada's West Coast but I predict there are bigger things ahead for Ms. McClung. She has, as they say, all the right stuff.

The book is very simple: there is a girl and she wants to live. The book is very complex: The Tower is a world, a philosophy course and a study of human interaction. The characters are amazing and outragous in the way people become in times of desperation, the situation is desperate and the calm voice in it all is a 12 year old girl who works endlessly on how to end the day alive. It reads like it is written from the war-battered cities dotted around the world, but is instead a special corner we choose to ignore in our own cities: New York, LA, Chicago, Tornoto, Vancouver, London, Liverpool, Paris If you like thrillers, I recommend this book. If you like literature, I recommend this book. If you like being carried along in a story to a place you never knew existed, to be returned, shaking but safe, back to your bedroom, then I recommend this book. If you want to know what russian roulette is like without having someone clean your brains off the wall, I recommend this book. This book will make you feel things, and that's rare. It doesn't cajole you or make you misty eyed, but gives you the charge of a junkie, covered in oozing infected pus, pawing at you, demanding attention. Like it or not, you will feel things, you will care about Zed, even as you must wait, powerless to help her. If you think of yourself as a reader, maybe you think you've seen it all. Then read this.