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saintakim's review against another edition
2.0
terrifying book and reassuring at the same time - you can be a smart guy and still not being able to pull a good novel out of yourself. a somewhat good coming of age story, about the fascination for books, alienation and the ever so common angst of 20 something college student ** and so much more mom **, it fails to be human when it needs to and fails to being borgesianly labyrinthine when it desperately has to. Some passages are interesting but the body or feelings seem to be a cumbersome data for the narration, actually everything is so cumbersome that it fails to coagulate in a novel, as is the book never puts the character at sort of distance, fascination and vertigo are expressed so poorly, all of this ends up being a unfun dark academia novel.
I get it really, but this book fails to tell it in any compelling way, despite a serviceable prose.
Just read Mohamed Mbougar Sarr if you want this somewhat well done.
I get it really, but this book fails to tell it in any compelling way, despite a serviceable prose.
Just read Mohamed Mbougar Sarr if you want this somewhat well done.
aklev13's review against another edition
5.0
So so so so good! Depressing but so engaging - loved the way it was written, loved the characters explorations with the philosophy of suicide - look forward to rereading this another time to better try and wrap my head around the ideas and enjoy the language :)
quinlansmith's review against another edition
Could not get into this, incredibly boring.
downby1's review against another edition
2.0
A shallow echo of earlier gothic novels with an entirely predictable twist and a collection of main characters trapped by the author's self image of smug importance. The only thing extraordinary about The Zero and the One is how banal it makes the assassination of morality, the taboo of incest, and even murder.
butterfly2507's review against another edition
1.0
I unfortunately didn't finish this book. I had such a hard time getting into it and it just overall didn't wow me. It's not because the writing is bad but just because the story itself is rather boring :(
rebeccalm's review against another edition
5.0
This is a dark tale of the risks we all take in making and maintaining friendships. It questions the power and influence that we give others over us - which sometimes results in devastating consequences. This was an interesting philosophical story of manipulation, deceit, loneliness, and the power of unchecked, dangerous ideas. The takeaway being that some people will go to great lengths to build the kind of life they want, and others only grow into their own with a little prodding from their surroundings.
This book was an intense read - it felt very grim and very real right from the beginning. The chapters alternate between time periods - what could loosely be defined as "pre-event" and "post-event" -
in a way that engages the mind into trying to understand exactly how/why things played out as they did. It was a really well crafted story.
This book was an intense read - it felt very grim and very real right from the beginning. The chapters alternate between time periods - what could loosely be defined as "pre-event" and "post-event" -
in a way that engages the mind into trying to understand exactly how/why things played out as they did. It was a really well crafted story.
obscuredbyclouds's review against another edition
2.0
I found the first half of the novel intriguing enough, although not particularly "thrilling". Yes, it's been done before, the homoerotic strong friendship at Oxford - one an English working class scholarship student and the other a visiting student from NYC - with suicide talk and exististential philosophy. It was pretentious and a little silly, but it was also fun! That fun stopped once the main character is in the US and interacts with the American's twin sister. The "twists" around the suicide pact were all really obvious, but what irritated me most was that the majority of the story in the second half was told by the characters to one another instead of shown. The ending especially was very irritating.
usbsticky's review against another edition
1.0
1 star = I didn't like it as per GR's rating system.
The author starts off with a one page "preface" as a warning about why you won't like it, pretty much. And I have to agree with him. I don't like it. That's not to say it's a bad book or that other people won't dislike it. It was just that for me I found this to be meandering and the writing to be disinterested. I want something to happen, but it just seems like the author is droning on about something. I want the text to lead me by the hand and me to follow - that's what I look for in a book. I'm looking for pleasure, for entertainment, for myself. The author pretty much says he wrote this for himself.
My advice to readers: read the preface, if you still want to go for it, go for it. You are the adventurous type.
My advice to the author: don't put such a downer on the front page... if you want to sell this book. At least try and make it appealing. That preface is an automatic -1 for people who want to try it.
I received this as an uncorrected proof for review.
The author starts off with a one page "preface" as a warning about why you won't like it, pretty much. And I have to agree with him. I don't like it. That's not to say it's a bad book or that other people won't dislike it. It was just that for me I found this to be meandering and the writing to be disinterested. I want something to happen, but it just seems like the author is droning on about something. I want the text to lead me by the hand and me to follow - that's what I look for in a book. I'm looking for pleasure, for entertainment, for myself. The author pretty much says he wrote this for himself.
My advice to readers: read the preface, if you still want to go for it, go for it. You are the adventurous type.
My advice to the author: don't put such a downer on the front page... if you want to sell this book. At least try and make it appealing. That preface is an automatic -1 for people who want to try it.
I received this as an uncorrected proof for review.
meredithserpa's review against another edition
1.0
I wish I saw the reviews before I started this book. It was incredibly boring and I was never invested in the characters. I skimmed the majority of the middle chapters just trying to understand the plot enough to deem this as "read."
fiendfull's review
4.0
The Zero and the One is a novel about intellect, questioning morality, and how people can be pawns in a larger game. Owen is an Oxford fresher from a working class background who, feeling lonely and out of place anywhere other than stuck into his work, ends up befriending a visiting student who believes they have a similar mindset for discussing philosophy. However, Zachary Foedern is more complicated than Owen first thought, constantly trying to defy convention, and their friendship lasts barely more than a term before Zach proposes his greatest transgression yet: a suicide pact.
The novel moves between Owen in the aftermath of Zach’s plans and showing Owen and Zach as friends, from meeting until ending. The narrative is unfurled like a mystery, though it is not a hugely surprising one, not even as Owen gets to know Zach’s twin sister Vera who he never met during their time at Oxford. The ultimate denouement is definitely set up, but this seems to work with Owen as a clever and also short-sighted narrator caught in this dark, recognisably literary fiction world.
The earlier narrative is more centred around students obsessed with their intellectual quest: in this case, an obscure philosopher and questions about the morality of suicide, with an Oxford and Berlin backdrop. The later plot, with Owen in New York, feels quite different, with hints of a mystery and a fish-out-of-water Englishman in America vibe. This variation can be a bit strange: it feels like a mixture of The Secret History, the Netflix series ‘The Good Place’, a dash of Brideshead, and maybe a bit of Nabokov too. The Oxford parts were surprisingly decent with only the odd jarringly Americanised detail, though the Berlin trip felt too fleeting.
The Zero and the One is clearly trying to be a certain kind of book, a literary thriller type with intellectual obsession and dark characters hiding secrets. At times it pulls this off better than others, but it still makes for an intriguing read.
The novel moves between Owen in the aftermath of Zach’s plans and showing Owen and Zach as friends, from meeting until ending. The narrative is unfurled like a mystery, though it is not a hugely surprising one, not even as Owen gets to know Zach’s twin sister Vera who he never met during their time at Oxford. The ultimate denouement is definitely set up, but this seems to work with Owen as a clever and also short-sighted narrator caught in this dark, recognisably literary fiction world.
The earlier narrative is more centred around students obsessed with their intellectual quest: in this case, an obscure philosopher and questions about the morality of suicide, with an Oxford and Berlin backdrop. The later plot, with Owen in New York, feels quite different, with hints of a mystery and a fish-out-of-water Englishman in America vibe. This variation can be a bit strange: it feels like a mixture of The Secret History, the Netflix series ‘The Good Place’, a dash of Brideshead, and maybe a bit of Nabokov too. The Oxford parts were surprisingly decent with only the odd jarringly Americanised detail, though the Berlin trip felt too fleeting.
The Zero and the One is clearly trying to be a certain kind of book, a literary thriller type with intellectual obsession and dark characters hiding secrets. At times it pulls this off better than others, but it still makes for an intriguing read.