Death-shaped entities like vampires, ghost girls, fathers, blank spaces, day-old peaches, and famous paintings make up the subjects of these twelve stories.
Dense, but not heavy ... Bertino is a very funny writer ... Verge[s] on precious, but the prose is photorealistic enough to neutralize the taste of sugar ... When a short story works, it can wield truly occult powers, exerting a force disproportionate to its dimensions. Through all of Exit Zero Bertino blurs the line between writer and magician ... Dazzling ... Few writers can revolve your mind in the space of four words. Bertino is one of them.
A master class in book structure. At its core are the small, quirky details we all either pick up or drop in the course of a day, rising to the struggles between and within ourselves that we depend on to stay vital ... Within these stories is a deep understanding that the things we do to stave off the madness of life ... Has a spontaneous and intense energy ... Nothing is clear, and yet the ending feels, somehow, right—rather than handing itself off easily.
Rooted in a profoundly earthy tenderness for the human condition ... With winsome wildness, capturing the uncapturable, Bertino offers up marvels on every page.
