Zombie

Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates is one of the most terrifying books I’ve ever read—and certainly the scariest in the past couple of years. Rather than the typical villain we’re given—someone crafty and clever and evil to the core, or perhaps a monstrous being that surpasses our wildest nightmares—Oates provides someone even more horrifying: someone who could be our next door neighbor, our slow cousin, our very selves.

Quentin P.—I actually just shivered while typing his name—is the strange kid you always wondered about in school. Maybe he had a sick smile for everyone he greeted, causing an uneasy feeling in your stomach. He was probably held back a year, or at least failed a class or two, and was never particularly bright. But he was someone we all knew, maybe even talked to or befriended out of pity or sheer curiosity or our own need to “be nice.”

And as Oates has written, he is also a violent, sadistic serial killer.

The book gets its title from the being that Quentin seeks—the perfect “zombie,” a person he can lobotomize (no, he is no doctor) and train to do whatever he wants, an effective lover and slave at once. However, his attempts at creating this perfect being all go wrong, causing him to simply continue seeking other attempts to fulfill his desire.

Be warned, it’s not a book everyone will enjoy. Hell, I don’t know if it can actually be enjoyed; but for a book of its type—does it even have a type?—a book to incite fear, to provide a look into what a serial killer might be like, and a book to stay with the reader long after the last page is tremblingly turned, it does a hell of a job.

Zombie is so disturbing, so dark and shocking, told from the nonchalant perspective of a psychotic killer who, unlike the Hannibal Lecters we’re used to, is so simple yet evil one has to wonder why the hell he isn’t caught. Oates has herself said that she based the story on a serial killer who was living in her area at the time—a killer who was never caught. She maintains that Quentin P. is much more consistent with the serial killer type, rather than Ted Bundy, who defied the average profile. This, of course, is just as scary as anything else, knowing that we don’t need to be fearing intelligent, calculating cruel men—but men of average, or even less-than-average, intelligence who are bent on following a sadistic mission.

It’s a short book and, with Quentin’s voice portrayed through a journal-like format (Oates has said that she imagined him confessing his deeds on stage in front of an audience), one of the quickest reads you might ever speed through. You won’t turn the pages so quickly because of the brevity or the accessibility of the language, however; you’ll be doing it looking over your shoulder, heart racing, eyes wide and unbelieving, desperate for the ride to end and for a justice that you may not find.