Nor is this the novel's only tour de force. Oates, who lives in leafy, upscale Princeton and teaches there, has also managed to challenge the dictum that truth is stranger than fiction: the book's horrific events, set in small-town Michigan, can fully hold their own with the grotesque, real-life crime headlines to which we've unfortunately become accustomed. And the reader's experience is similar, progressing from incredulity to revulsion to a kind of queasy fascination. This book aims to shock and it succeeds, no small feat these days.

The pertinent question here is, does the book aim any higher? Some reviews have claimed it does—that Oates is stating something important about the human condition through Quentin's calmly deranged narrative. Peter D. Kramer (author of Listening to Prozac, and a singularly appropriate source, given the number of medications Quentin takes) states in a glowing back-cover blurb that Zombie "succeeds at a profound level, simultaneously horrifying the reader and demonstrating that nothing human is alien to us."

This is a questionable rationale. Despite Oates' credentials as a serious writer (National Book Award winner, multiple Pulitzer Prize nominee), there is really nothing new here; no profound psychological insights are offered. The story's allure, such as it is, lies in our cathartic ability to identify with and imagine the very worst, and in the quirkily authentic voice of its affectless narrator. We already know "nothing human is alien to us," and are reminded of this again and again on the news.

The novel earns respect for its stylistic skill and—let's be forthright here—its compulsive readability. Many people who pick it up will finish it in a single gulp. But therein lies the problem: the sexually driven atrocities the book depicts are all too plausible today, all too common. Zombie feeds on this awareness and on the deep unease it creates.

(Reviewed December 4, 1995)