"Twelve delightfully strange, haunting stories from the acclaimed, oracular author of Beautyland"--
"[Marie-Helene] Bertino blurs the line between writer and magician . . . Dazzling." --Molly Young, The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)
A Must-Read: The New York Times Book Review, Bustle, Harper's Bazaar, Chicago Review of Books, Our Culture, Literary Hub
Winner of PEN/O. Henry Prize: "Exit Zero"
Included in The Best American Short Stories: "Viola in Midwinter"
Twelve delightfully strange, haunting stories from the acclaimed, oracular author of Beautyland.
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 oracle and author of Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino.
"[Exit Zero will] surprise you. And make you laugh. And sometimes devastate you. Sometimes all of the above . . . Everything [Bertino] writes is covered in a slight dusting of magic."
--Charles Yu, Bomb
"Charming and strange . . . Luminous tales of haunting absurdity."
--Michael Welch, Chicago Review of Books
"Exit Zero, like all of Marie-Helene Bertino's fiction, climb[s] to the rarest heights by combining intuition with emotional wisdom."
--The Brooklyn Rail
"Exit Zero reveals everyday instances of magic via an expert blend of humor and melancholy."
--Greta Rainbow, Bustle
"[Exit Zero cuts] at the core of what it means to be alive."
--Chelsey Sanchez, Harper's Bazaar
"Bertino's way of looking at the world continues to dazzle."
--Sam Franzini, Our Culture
"With winsome wildness capturing the incapturable, Bertino offers up marvels on every page."
--Annie Bostrom, Booklist
"Stories that slide into the magical while staying determinedly real . . . Bertino's characters . . . will remind us of our neighbors, our friends, even ourselves as we navigate their worlds in Bertino's confident hands. Ardently whimsical, yet never centerless."
--Kirkus Reviews
"There's a Denis Johnsonesque deadpan lurking in [Exit Zero]. And yet the book also has a spontaneous and intense energy . . . You feel changed . . . intoxicated, as if you expect something very different from reality after having tasted Bertino's version."
--Max Winter, On the Seawall
"[A] potent and darkly funny collection . . . driven by energetic pacing, quick wit, and surprising twists. Bertino once again displays her formidable talent for the uncanny."
--Publishers Weekly
Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of Beautyland, Parakeet, 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas, and the story collection Safe as Houses. She was the 2017 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland. She has received the PEN/O. Henry Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the Mississippi Review Fiction Prize, and fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Sewanee Writers Conference, and New York City's Center for Fiction, and her work has twice been featured on NPR's Selected Shorts.
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