As usual, JW captures the nuances of time, place, character; but the very nature of his protagonist's narrative leaves me frustrated. I'm struggling to finish this book, and catch myself racing through it in fits and starts (much like Brian Remy I suppose), hoping that the ending will make it all worthwhile. I would much rather savor a read though than stumble from one blank wall to another, looking for an out.

And don't believe the hype....unlike Beautiful Ruins....this is a beautiful mess..

For a while in the mid-2000s there were a lot of "post-9/11" works. There were post-9/11 horror films, movies, novels and TV shows. The phrase is meant to remind us that we're living in a different world, and these new works were supposed to be charting previously-uncharted territory, reacting to a world where the most basic rules had changed. It would be easy to apply that same label to "The Zero," since it deals directly with the aftermath of that September morning. However, that label would be (as most labels are) extremely reductive. Jess Walter has created a work that feels immediate and gripping, applying a noir framework to a story about one man's struggle to deal with what happened on September 11. Protagonist Brian Remy's eyes are failing, his memory skips hours, days and weeks, and he's not really sure what is going on in his life anymore. In short, he feels the way a lot of us felt after the tragedy. The story offers us the chance to jump back into that terrible time in our history, to laugh a bit, and to feel the fear of a man who thinks that his life is slipping away. Of course, we've learned that life goes on whether we want it to or not, but Brian's plight reminds us of a time when it felt like nothing would ever be the same.