Death-shaped entities—with all of their humor and strangeness— haunt the twelve stories in Exit Zero. Vampires, ghost girls, fathers, blank spaces, day-old peaches, and famous paintings all pierce through their world into ours, reminding us to pay attention! and look alive! and offering many other flashes of wisdom from the author of Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino.
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.
Potent and darkly funny ... Delightfully bizarre ... Each story is driven by energetic pacing, quick wit, and surprising twists. Bertino once again displays her formidable talent for the uncanny.
