2.5 StarsThis book is often cited as one of the most disturbing books people have ever read. Needless to say, I've been dying to read the one for myself. I can understand how the fragmented prose might create a creepy experience for some readers, but the narrative style just did not work for me. I'm very disappointed. 

I’m not going to list all the trigger warnings, but there are a lot. If you can’t stomach reading about Jeffrey Dahmer, this book is definitely not for you. It is explicit/detailed, and the first person POV of Quentin P is horrifying and unhinged. JCO is an amazing writer, but this is some next level dark content. I kind of wish I didn’t read this, it was so disturbing 😣

I HATED this book! It was excellently written and it did what it was supposed to do...it scared the crap out of me. This is a character study of a social deviant. I don't want to spoil this for anyone who reads it, so I won't give away the ending, but definitely not something you read while lying on the beach catching your tan. No escapism here. You come face to face with the evil and cunning of the sociopathic and psychotic mind. Be prepared to bathe in Dettol and then curl up in bed under the

If you're looking for a book about Romero style living dead, look elsewhere. Nor is this a book about a certain Cranberries song that just mentioning will be stuck in your heeeeeeeeaaad… in your heeeeeeeeaaad… No, this is a book about Jeffrey Dahmer, but not the real Jeffrey Dahmer. This fictionalized version of him named Quentin… I'm sorry Q___ P___ no, sorry back to Quentin. I apologize, the author makes the strange choice to have him use only his initials for a bit (in particular when our fir...

Ever wonder what goes through the mind of a sexual psychopath like Jeffrey Dahmer?Well, Joyce Carol Oates’s Zombie will show you – in a grisly, uncompromising and at times revolting fashion. The book’s protagonist is a 31-year-old Dahmer-like character named Quentin P, who lives in the Midwest and is currently on probation for a sex crime he committed earlier, and, in between visits to his probation officer, psychiatrist and therapy group manages to find more victims and do terrible, terrible th...

I generally like Oates's dark fiction (her short stories are particularly good), but I chose not to finish this one. I'd meant to read Zombie for a long time, and was disappointed to find it utterly repulsive when I finally got around to it . . . but not in the way you might imagine.I thought I knew what I was getting into when I picked up a book told from the POV of a sexually depraved serial killer dabbling in icepick lobotomies. (Browse my library and you'll see it takes a lot more than that

A Meditation on PsycopathyOates reminds her readers that there are people who cannot be considered human. They lack something essential, some ‘wetware’ without which they never fit comfortably among others. This implies a scale of humanness. Some are more human than others. This is the implication of Oates’s journey inside the mind of a fictional psychopath. Psychopathy is not something that any society confronts comfortably. These people are defective, not mad. How can they be identified? By wh...

A ruthless, blindingly-ugly, revealing character study of a sexual psychopath.Joyce Carol Oates, I now officially forgive you for the tedium of We Were the Mulvaneys. This book was all that Mulvaneys was NOT - brilliantly written, brave, and (maybe most importantly) brief.It became clear to me after reading this book that Quentin P is based at least loosely on real life serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, which is interesting from a historical perspective. But I enjoyed reading this being clueless abo...

I am not quite sure what I have just read. To be sure, I was totally rivetted. I thought about this book all the time, I couldn’t wait to get back to it, I wanted to tell everyone about it. I even left it in a not-so-obvious, obvious position on a table in my office, desperately hoping someone would stop by and notice the book on the table – the exchange would go something like this: “Oh, Zombie what’s that all about Mark?”“Well, I’m glad you asked *insert name* - but GOSH, I didn’t mean to

Short, dark, and very scary - like a tipsy 2am Uber ride home that instead drags you into macabre neighborhoods and makes you question exactly what your ultimate payment will be (and maybe whether somebody slipped a touch of rohypnol in your margarita). Things are OFF. Way OFF.So. You up for being freaked out and mesmerized for 200 pages?? Do yourself a favor and do NOT read the publisher's blurb or other reviews. I walked into this book entirely blind and assumed because of the title that I'd s...

How to Avoid Being BourgeoisThis is not terrifying or "monstrous," and it is not a shocking revelation. It does not take us "into the mind of a serial killer." It is not "harrowing," and it's not "disturbing." It is a strained and earnest attempt to imagine the kind of life that would decisively overturn bourgeois values. But it doesn't do that, because the imagining of the Other is already part of middle-class American life. Even the most surprising lines pale as soon as they're read, because i...

Joyce Carol Oates snared my attention in her old short story, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? In her novel, Zombie, (1995), she writes in a first person narrative of a psychopath who has a crush on various youthful men, and uses devilish means to capture them and use them as sex slaves. In turns, quizzically funny and nasty, the writings are merely scribbles and with various doodles in the borders that take on sinister meanings as you read the story. As a reader I am a little put off

Lol the title cleverly references how the author wrote this on autopilot.

Well, that was disturbing as hell.

”& ONE TWO THREE hard jolts into the boy’s scrotum & moaning & his own eyes lurching in his head he came, & came, & came. & there was a blackout of how many seconds, or minutes, he did not know. & laying upon the boy shuddering & trying to calm his heart. I love you, don’t make me hurt you. Love love love you!”Though a dark streak runs through all of Joyce Carol Oates’s work, in Zombie that streak is not a streak at all, but a deep bleeding gash. Oates, with hesitation or remorse, drowns the rea...

An unpleasant book, taking you, with absolute lack of Hanniballian romance, into the petty, insignificant mind of a serial killer. The main character only wants to dominate pretty men; he's as cheap and tiresome and disorganized and lame as a middle-aged guy leering at you in a Denny's. To destroy the romance of serial killing: it's like that scene in Sandman where Morpheus takes away the illusions at the "Cereal Convention," only the illusion is actually taken away, not handwaved as one of Morp...

It would be wrong to say I enjoyed this one--I didn't. But then again, I wasn't supposed to. Joyce Carol Oates has created a novel so eerie and unnerving that the words "enjoyment," "escapism," and "entertaining" are totally inapplicable. But it is a masterfully written tale with the kind of skillfulness you'd expect from Oates, who is a phenomenal writer. I'm not going to write much more about this because I've got other books waiting for me tonight, but what I will say is that you should only