Jess Walter is an extremely talented writer from Spokane of whom I really enjoyed reading his previous novel Citizen Vince immensely. The Zero was a finalist for the National Book Award, so I was eager to read it when it came out in paperback. I think Walter has made a big leap in style, content, and exposition. The Zero is more ambitious in its scope. It is the story of a ground zero cop who has memory gaps ala “Memento” and finds himself in a Kafkaesque for an unknown government agency, DD (Department of Documentation), search for a women who may have escaped the terrorist attack. It a sort of post 9/11 novel as it deals with the physical and psychological fallout caused by the attacks and how it has changed the way people view the world. The novel jumps around mimicking the way that Brian Remy feels disoriented by his condition finding himself dealing with things he can’t remember doing. Meanwhile, his vision damaged from his rescue work on 9/11 continues to deteriorate and serves as a kind of metaphor. It is a challenging novel and reflects the ambition of the author to document the malaise that America faced after 9/11. My only complaint is about how the novel ends , which I won’t give away here, but it seems a bit like a cop out to me.
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