The Zero by Jess Walter

Nick Hornby clued me into Walter’s previous book, Citizen Vince. I don’t remember if he reviewed The Zero, but it is only on Nick Hornby’s recommendation and my previous experience with Citizen Vince that I would pick up a book set in New York on and after 9/11.

I’m just not into exploring that particular day. But 9/11 just serves as a background; The horror of the day is nodded to, but not dwelled upon.

However, that said, I really enjoyed this book. The main character, a policeman-turned-9/11-investigator, has a Memento-like condition where he only remembers snatches of his life. It’s not clear whether he is losing “gaps” in his memory, or if his personality has become split, each side only perceiving sections of the story.

Regardless, we jump right along with the main character (or at least, the sympathetic version of him), with each scene cutting off suddenly and pickup up abruptly in the next one, leaving him routinely appalled by what he’s been doing during the gaps. The story is engaging in the same way that Memento is, in that you struggle enjoyably in trying to understand what’s going on.

2 for 2, I’ll have to keep Jess Walter on my watch list.

Citizen Vince by Jess Walter

I’m not clear on how this came to be on my Wish List… it made a lot of pick lists in 2005, I think.

I thought it was a fun novel, easily read and engaging. Set in 1979, it humorously chronicles the adventures of a man in the witness protection program who is trying to make sense of the presidential election as this will be his first time voting. In the meantime, his past is catching up to him. Kind of a toned down My Blue Heaven without the fish-out-of-water theme.

It just occurred to me… this book must have come from Nick Hornby’s Stuff I’ve Been Reading column from The Believer… Hornby has a quote on the back of the jacket.

Going to The Believer online, this book was published in 2005. Try the November 2005 issue… Hornby lists Over Tumbled Graves by the same author under Books Read. Flip back a couple months and bingo, Citizen Vince under Books Read, Tumbled Graves under Books Bought.

So, Hornby liked it well enough to pick up Over Tumbled Graves immediately. I’ll have to see what he said about it.

All of which reminds me I haven’t read Hornby’s A Long Way Down. Which is currently available from PaperBackSwap.com. Done and done.

ETA: Here’s what Hornby said about Graves…

“I read and loved Jess Walter’s Citizen Vince recently, so I wanted to check out one of his earlier books. Unlike Citizen Vince, Over Tumbled Graves belongs firmly within the crime genre, although it’s not formulaic– it actually plays cleverly with the serial-killer formula. I enjoyed it a lot, but on the evidence of the recent book, Walter is a writer who is heading for territory that gives him more freedom than genre fiction allows.”