So fearsomely excellent it almost hurt to read. Truly the best collection I’ve come across in a decade.” — Wells Tower
“I devoured Sarah Hall’s MADAME ZERO like Mrs. Fox eats a pigeon with clipped wings. Reading this collection was like reading Kelly Link or Kevin Wilson or Lucy Wood’s stories for the first time. These are the kind of sexual, surreal stories I yearn to read and aspire to write.” — Helen Ellis, author of American Housewife
“In Madame Zero’s nine brief stories, Hall covers a staggering amount of ground, crafting compelling narratives that are expansive despite their brevity. Sensual and chilling by turns, this collection is electric.” — Paste Magazine
“Hall is as bold with her pen as her character Evie is with her newfound sensuality: there’s nothing furtive about these brilliant stories. Each one is a leap into a dark, mysterious void that ultimately reveals glittering terrors therein.” — Independent
“Winning...Hall’s language is at all times remarkable, moving between evocative lyricism and cool precision as the stories demand...With her brilliant depictions of the strange places of the human mind, Hall has crafted an illuminating collection that will haunt readers for a long time.” — Washington Independent Review of Books
“Riveting..strange, lyrical and unforgettable.” — Shelf Awareness
“A perfect balance of language and content, poised at the magical midway point between the distillation of poetry and the vicariousness of prose.” — Los Angeles Review of Books
“If you haven’t read [Hall] yet, the best of these dark tales are a perfect place to start.” — The Daily Telegraph
“Hall looks with frightening believability into dystopian, apocalyptic and disease-ravaged near futures. Already Booker-shortlisted twice for her novels, Hall is an edgy, sensuous and immediate writer of striking power and grace.” — Sunday Times (London)
“From childlessness to killer superbugs, these powerful stories are dazzling in range and execution.” — Mail on Sunday
“A 21st-century take on the ghost story, this is uneasy but essential reading.” — Sunday Telegraph
“Beautiful, rich and unsettling, filled with dark ideas, inner and outer.” — Stylist (UK)
“A bold set of stories that speak to the times… Humming with tension and enlivened by Hall’s nimble prose, these of-the-moment stories form a collection that’s destined to endure.” — BookPage
“Exceptional, compelling, frightening and authentic.” — The Guardian
“Hall distinguishes herself across an extraordinary range of stories....Her prose, which can seem both understated and lushly evocative at the same time, haunts.” — Glasgow Herald
“Razor-sharp writing forms a striking canvas for stories which teeter on the edge of bizarre and are riveting and vital.” — Booklist
“What a marvelous collection! I loved these stories, each one inviting us—with bright, clear, and startling sentences—on a journey into the heart of wilderness: what it is, where it resides, and how we each hunger for its many incarnations.” — Robin MacArthur, author of Half-Wild: Stories
“These stories showcase Hall’s thematic ambition and formal skill. She’s adept at matching voice to narrative, and her language is inventive and expressive … Hall finds the weirdness in everyday life and makes the strange feel quotidian.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Hall is one of those rare writers whose short fiction has the same luminosity as her novels. But the short form allows her more room to probe and roam, to experiment with form, to sink her fingers into the earth....The body is often treacherous and the self is slippery.” — The Observer (London)
“A disquieting demonstration of the power of the form.” — Publishers Weekly
“Hall writes of the borderlands beyond social conformity in ripe, sensual prose....A collection to savour.” — Metro
“Dark and memorable...These aren’t particularly comforting stories; they’re fragments of lives wrenched out of alignment...But their poise, power and assurance are very striking indeed.” — New Statesman
Winning...Hall’s language is at all times remarkable, moving between evocative lyricism and cool precision as the stories demand...With her brilliant depictions of the strange places of the human mind, Hall has crafted an illuminating collection that will haunt readers for a long time.
Washington Independent Review of Books
A perfect balance of language and content, poised at the magical midway point between the distillation of poetry and the vicariousness of prose.
Los Angeles Review of Books
I devoured Sarah Hall’s MADAME ZERO like Mrs. Fox eats a pigeon with clipped wings. Reading this collection was like reading Kelly Link or Kevin Wilson or Lucy Wood’s stories for the first time. These are the kind of sexual, surreal stories I yearn to read and aspire to write.
Hall looks with frightening believability into dystopian, apocalyptic and disease-ravaged near futures. Already Booker-shortlisted twice for her novels, Hall is an edgy, sensuous and immediate writer of striking power and grace.
A 21st-century take on the ghost story, this is uneasy but essential reading.
Dark and memorable...These aren’t particularly comforting stories; they’re fragments of lives wrenched out of alignment...But their poise, power and assurance are very striking indeed.
Razor-sharp writing forms a striking canvas for stories which teeter on the edge of bizarre and are riveting and vital.
Hall is one of those rare writers whose short fiction has the same luminosity as her novels. But the short form allows her more room to probe and roam, to experiment with form, to sink her fingers into the earth....The body is often treacherous and the self is slippery.
Hall distinguishes herself across an extraordinary range of stories....Her prose, which can seem both understated and lushly evocative at the same time, haunts.
Exceptional, compelling, frightening and authentic.
A bold set of stories that speak to the times… Humming with tension and enlivened by Hall’s nimble prose, these of-the-moment stories form a collection that’s destined to endure.
Hall writes of the borderlands beyond social conformity in ripe, sensual prose....A collection to savour.
Beautiful, rich and unsettling, filled with dark ideas, inner and outer.
What a marvelous collection! I loved these stories, each one inviting us—with bright, clear, and startling sentences—on a journey into the heart of wilderness: what it is, where it resides, and how we each hunger for its many incarnations.
Razor-sharp writing forms a striking canvas for stories which teeter on the edge of bizarre and are riveting and vital.
Hall is as bold with her pen as her character Evie is with her newfound sensuality: there’s nothing furtive about these brilliant stories. Each one is a leap into a dark, mysterious void that ultimately reveals glittering terrors therein.
05/08/2017 Hall’s second collection of short stories is a disquieting demonstration of the power of the form, in which “you may never get to the bottom of something. You might end up staring over a precipice,” as do a couple and their friend in “Wilderness” when they attempt to cross a dangerous bridge over an abyss that is as symbolically charged as it is real. Two other stories, “Later His Ghost” and “One in Four,” take place in the kind of altered or threatened landscapes for which Hall is celebrated—the first in a dystopian future in which freezing temperatures and relentless winds have destroyed civilized life, the other in an era of a superbug that is devastating the population. In “Mrs. Fox,” a man chronicles his wife’s transformation into a fox. A woman’s chance encounter with a former lover in “Luxury Hour” demonstrates the writer’s penchant for unremitting melancholy, and “Evie,” an exploration of a woman’s escalating sexual desire, goes to the grim heart of human nature. These unnerving stories hover over unspoken truths; in “Goodnight Nobody,” the message is so deeply shrouded as to be indecipherable. Hall, whose fiction is known for its sense of place (specifically the countryside of her native Cumbria), has set herself a challenge, searching for meaning in other avenues. The results are challenging and thought-provoking. (July)
In Madame Zero’s nine brief stories, Hall covers a staggering amount of ground, crafting compelling narratives that are expansive despite their brevity. Sensual and chilling by turns, this collection is electric.
Hall is as bold with her pen as her character Evie is with her newfound sensuality: there’s nothing furtive about these brilliant stories. Each one is a leap into a dark, mysterious void that ultimately reveals glittering terrors therein.
Riveting..strange, lyrical and unforgettable.
From childlessness to killer superbugs, these powerful stories are dazzling in range and execution.
If you haven’t read [Hall] yet, the best of these dark tales are a perfect place to start.
So fearsomely excellent it almost hurt to read. Truly the best collection I’ve come across in a decade.
Hall writes of the borderlands beyond social conformity in ripe, sensual prose....A collection to savour.
Hall writes of the borderlands beyond social conformity in ripe, sensual prose....A collection to savour.
A 21st-century take on the ghost story, this is uneasy but essential reading.
06/15/2017 A woman who morphs into a fox, a feral 12-year-old discovered out on the moors, a woman consumed by strange new appetites, and a world transformed by catastrophic windstorms are some of the bizarre themes in this collection. In "Mrs. Fox," a happily married couple is worried about the wife's sudden illness. What seems at first to be morning sickness turns into something far more sinister. While on a therapeutic walk in the woods, the husband is stunned to see his wife shed her skin, grow fur, and become a fox. The reverse of "Mrs. Fox" is "Case Study 2," in which an undernourished wild child is found wandering alone on the moors. Treatment attempts to humanize him prove extremely difficult. Mystery lies at the heart of "Evie" when a woman develops a voracious and unexplained appetite for food, alcohol, and raunchy sex. Finally, the entire world is rendered unrecognizable in "Later, His Ghost," a postapocalyptic tale about a man's risky search for provisions and books. VERDICT Hall (How To Paint a Dead Man), a Granta Best of Young British Novelists, is not as well known as some of her contemporaries. She deserves a closer look for her beguiling collection. [See Prepub Alert, 2/13/17.]
★ 2017-04-18 Short fiction from the author of The Wolf Border (2015), shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.In this diverse collection of stories, Hall depicts ordinary people confronting extreme circumstances. In "Case Study 2," a social worker's own inability to have a child complicates her attempts to help a boy rescued from a bizarre commune. A young woman's fear of heights gives her new insights into an unfortunate relationship in "Wilderness." When the title character in "Evie" develops an insatiable need for sweets, alcohol, and sex, her husband has to decide whether this is the end of their rather boring marriage or its salvation. A few stories are explicitly dystopian. "Later His Ghost," for example, is set in a world decimated by extreme weather. "One in Four" is a brief, epistolary piece about a pandemic, and "Theatre 6" is a chilling—and timely—depiction of a society in which saving the life of a pregnant woman in distress can be dangerous. These stories showcase Hall's thematic ambition and formal skill. She's adept at matching voice to narrative, and her language is inventive and expressive without being a distraction; more often than not, she finds just the right words for entirely unfamiliar situations. All the author's strengths are evident in "Mrs. Fox"—an award-winning story and the best in this volume—in which a woman called Sophia turns into a canid. The fact that Hall offers no naturalistic reason or magical explanation for this metamorphosis is intensely satisfying. It's a pleasure to be transported to a world where this sort of thing just happens, and watching as Sophia's husband adjusts to this new reality suggests that we already live in a world where, maybe, this sort of thing just happens. Readers familiar with Angela Carter's work might recognize this as a contemporary, suburban "The Tiger's Bride." Hall finds the weirdness in everyday life and makes the strange feel quotidian.