Zombie

Rating:
Summary: The grimmest and grittiest
Review: True crime fans of that genre's reigning doyenne Ann Rule will love this grisly and in-your-face penetration into the mind of a brutal sex criminal and serial murderer. I find it very disturbing how intensely accurate and psychologically sound author Oates can write of her twisted and entirely weirded-out protagonist. Such is indeed the gift of an incredibly talented, virtuoso, and versatile literary artist. Never forget that Oates is a consummate stylist and that her characters, plots, and settings are always vividly and aptly imagined and that her writing is always the literary equivalent of cream (sometimes fraiche; sometimes ice, sometimes whipped, and sometime sour, but cream nonetheless!). However in this short novel, her experimentation with odd slangy sentence fragments, bizarre punctuation and ungainly capitalization are absolutely Faulknerian. Certainly, there is much here to remind of THE SOUND AND THE FURY, especially the similarities in communications between Benjy Compson and Oates' own Quentin. An amazing book for Oates fans and I really hope the true crime crowd find their way here too.

Rating:
Summary: Gruesome but compelling
Review: Zombie repulsed me. The narrator, Quentin P., is loathsome, sick. But in Oates' hands, the brutal serial killer becomes someone we almost know. Oates plunges us into Quentin's world and forces us to acknowledge that his madness is not without its own twisted logic. You see, all Quentin wants is someone in his life he can love and control completely. Zombie's horror is not so much in what Quentin does, but in how he recounts it: He describes his crimes the way my son might talk about his day at school. Zombie is short and taut, more like the novels Oates pens under her pseudonym, Rosamond Smith, than like her longer works. Gruesome, yes, but a compelling read.