Madame Zero: 9 Stories by Sarah Hall

Madame Zero: 9 Stories Reviews

• 
  Hugh

  Another fine, unsettling collection of stories, perhaps not quite as visceral as the ones in
  The Beautiful Indifference, but if anything subtler and more imaginative. The story from which the title is taken, Mrs Fox, is particularly striking if a little reminiscent of Angela Carter - in this one a man deals with the metamorphosis of his wife into a fox, and the story is told in a matter-of-fact style that belies its fantasy element - this story won the BBC Short story prize in 2013 and it is easy to see why.
  
  Sorry I don't have time to write a more thorough review, but I would definitely recommend this one.
• 
  Melki

  After a while, conversation got up about fears and phobias. Heights. Needles. Being shot in the back of the head in the cinema. Clowns' mouths.
  
  Clowns' mouths?
  
  Joe snorted.
  
  Don't you mean just clowns, Zach? The whole clown entity is considered pretty sinister.
  
  I do not, mate, Zachary said. I mean exactly their mouths. Their lipsticky mouths.
  Like giant red vaginas.
  
  Becca said nothing. Zachary mustn't have seen too many vaginas, she thought.*
  
  I've been meaning to read more by this author since I encountered
  The Electric Michelangelo back in 2010. I went so far as to buy a few more of her books, then parked them on the shelf where I glance at them fondly every now and again. Luckily, this one was read before being consigned to limbo.
  
  There's a mix of some really good stuff here, and a few stories I didn't care for at all. The stories I liked, I really, really liked - hence, the four stars.
  
  My faves were Later His Ghost, a strange apocalyptic tale about a man trying to create a special Christmas for a pregnant woman, Goodnight Nobody which concerns a family's reaction to a neighborhood tragedy, and Mrs. Fox, the story from which Hall draws her title. This author is definitely not a feel-good writer; she doesn't shy away from unpleasant, even disturbing themes. All of her characters seem damaged or affected in some way. And, two of her tales concern women who become utterly transformed, much to the dismay of their husbands.
  
  She turns her head and smiles. Something is wrong with her face. The bones have been re-carved. Her lips are thin and her nose is a dark blade. Teeth small and yellow. The lashes of her hazel eyes have thickened and her brows are drawn together, an expression he has never seen, a look that is almost craven.**
  
  These are probably not for everyone, but if you're in the mood for something unusual, Hall's stories may do the trick. Now, to put this one on the shelf, and, perhaps . . . release one of her other books from their years of neglect.
  
  
  *from Wilderness
  **from Mrs. Fox
• 
  Jan-Maat

  I liked this collection of short stories, which is my first tender bite of Sarah Hall's writing. Nine stories over 176 pages, the shortest was under ten pages the longest over two dozen pages. In terms of the experience of reading they reminded me of being in an Art Gallery, looking at a room of intense, slightly dark baroque paintings, each story was the curator's explanation and elaboration of one of those pictures drawing my attention to small details, an item of jewellery, or does the narrator protest too much? The readings were rich. My eye was drawn to a contrast between the human world of encroaching or retreating cities and that part of the world have is not controlled by humans; animals, the sea, illness. This was not present in all the stories but I felt in most, sometimes in opposition, sometimes as a longing (perhaps both in the same story **cough, cough Mrs Fox**). Though Luxury Hour was a stand out story that did not have such a contrast.
  
  It certainly gives an impression of the author's interest - intense personal narratives at a moment of crisis often in relation as well to that non-human world - the sense of escape or order suggested by a flight of geese (Theatre Six), or the destructive as well as the creative potential of life - Shiva dancing on the mountain top.
• 
  Peter Boyle

  This is my first encounter with Sarah Hall and it left me wondering why I had taken so long. In an unsettling collection of tales all centred around some kind of transformation, this gifted author puts her dark imagination and considerable writing talents to wonderful use.
  
  Convention tells us in which direction each story will lead but Hall confounds our expectations every time. Three tales in particular stood out for me. Later, His Ghost is a terrifying slice of
  cli-fi which imagines a world literally torn apart by relentless high winds. In Eve, a man becomes both appalled and aroused by the new-found sexual appetites of his previously timid wife.
  
  However, it is the unnerving Mrs Fox that will not leave my mind. A couple are walking in the countryside when the woman transforms into a vixen in front of her husband's eyes. But this is no fairytale: it's a visceral piece of writing in which a wild animal has taken the place of a loved one, without cause or reason. The man cleans up the "black, twisted scat" that the creature leaves on the kitchen floor and tries not to be disgusted by its smell. He brings home a live pigeon for her to eat and becomes repulsed when she rips it open in front of his eyes. This arrangement can't go on and she eventually leaves for a more suitable environment. For months the man is overwhelmed with sadness but one day on the heath, where the metamorphosis occurred, he finally comes to terms with what has happened:

  "To be comfortable inside one’s sadness is not valueless. This too will pass. All things tend towards transience, mutability. It is in such mindful moments, when everything is both held and released, that revelation comes."

  
  It's an arresting tale and I wasn't surprised to learn that it won the BBC short story award. I must admit that not all of these stories made an impression on me, but the ones that did struck me with their surreal imagery and keen insight. Madame Zero is a startling, haunting collection that I won't forget in a hurry.
• 
  Magdalith

  Zmysłowe, niepokojące, bardzo klimatyczne opowiadania. "Apokaliptyczne" - napisał ktoś w jakiejś recenzji, i ja się z tym określeniem zgadzam. Jest w tych tekstach wszystko to, czego się boimy, ale nie chodzi o duchy i strzygi, ale o upiory dnia powszedniego. Że on odejdzie, że ona umrze, że ukochany utonie, a ja nie będę umiała pomóc, że ktoś bliski okaże się nagle kimś zupełnie innym, niż to nam się zdawało. Że ja sama okażę się potworem. Że świat jaki znamy się skończy. Niektóre z tych opowiadań są dojmująco smutne, kilka jest cieleśnie i naturalistycznie dosadnych, ale niemal wszystkie są w jakiś niezrozumiały sposób piękne. Sugestywne opisy przyrody, natura która jest przepięknym ale tajemniczym i nieokiełznanym monstrum. Nasza, ludzka natura, również.
  
  Są tu dwie grupy opowiadań i ta pierwsza, balansująca na granicy realizmu i realizmu magicznego, podobała mi się bardziej, zrobiła większe wrażenie, chwilami ma się tu ciarki na plecach. Za to druga ujmuje głębią psychologicznych portretów, albo raczej portrecików, bo teksty są krótkie, pokazują tylko małe wycinki życia, szkice niewielkich obrazków. Ale trudno zapomnieć te obrazki.
  
  Jestem zachwycona i chcę więcej pani Hall!
• 
  Victoria (Eve's Alexandria)

  I had read two of the stories in this collection before, Mrs Fox and Evie, both of which are fizzing with sexual animal energy (although the latter is terrifyingly disturbing) and quite brilliant. The rest of the stories were excellent, with not a bad apple amongst them. My favourites were Later, His Ghost, in which a young man fights the elements in a dystopian future, and Goodnight Nobody, in which a little girl sets off to take her mum's forgotten sandwiches to her work. Highly recommended, as with all Hall's work.
• 
  Jonathan Pool

  *****Updated following Charleston Short Stiry Festival 2018*****
  
  
  I read Madame Zero a year before getting the chance to hear Sarah Hall and Chris Power Mothers at the Charleston Short Story festival in September 2018. Great venue (in the ‘new’ restored, barn); great discussion (chaired by Catherine Taylor); insight and openness from Sarah Hall.
  
  Sarah Hall made a number of points about her influences and her writing intentions- with particular reference to Madame Zero
  • Of short stories- “A dark psychology”
  • Her background- poetry & short stories at university. Irony that wrote novels first.
  • On the oeuvre- novels allow the writer to be “messy”. Short stories don’t- no meandering
  • Madame Zero bookending Mrs Fox, with Evie, was deliberate
  • Mrs Fox. Charleston’s own- David Garnett wrote a novella in 1922. Aware of, but hadn’t read. Love story? Or feminist fable? The most fluid writing she had produced. The live bird, the litter of cubs, the transformation.
  • Theatre 6- dystopian, totalitarian. Inspired by the Irish abortion debate and the specific case of Savita Halappanavar (who died in Ireland 2012 from complications arising from a septic miscarriage)
  • Destination. Commissioned by audible. Dystopian imagining after Hall was conscious of the number of floods, and climate change all around us.
  • Short stories translate well. Hall reads a lot of foreign fiction stories.
  • Tobias Wolff “Hunters in the snow”. Big impact on Hall; cognitive dissonance
  (the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioural decisions and attitude change)
  
  In short (forgive the pun), a very articulate, energised, and listenable public performer. The stories in Madame Zero are well worth reading, and re-reading.
  
  
  Original review
  Sarah Hall has just completed her duties as Booker Prize judge for 2017 (choosing George Saunders) Her own writing experience and achievements are excellent.
  So, I was expecting good things from Madame Zero despite my hesitancy about short stories in general.
  
  Madame Zero did not disappoint. The "9 Stories" cover very different subject matter and the majority quickly grab the reader's attention (the virtue of short stories, there's no big preamble).
  A couple of the stories confirmed my innate prejudice about the short format, simply that I wanted more. In particular Later, his ghost, a dystopian future, has immense potential as a longer novel. I see that Sarah Hall does like writing futuristic stories.
  
  Men don’t come out of this collection very well. Complacency, male buffoonery, detachment.
  The majority of the stories examine either sexual liberation (from a woman's perspective, primarily) and/or gender contrast as women, (again primarily), are faced with life's burdens.
  Evie cleverly revolves around graphic sex, pornography, but a quick google search reveals that this is far from a gratuitous outpouring, and the sexual message is much more subtle than at first appearance.
  The much admired Mrs Fox is highly sexualised, too, in a clever and compelling way.
  
  A very enjoyable set of stories written in easily flowing style.
• 
  Lark Benobi

  These stories are obliquely told. Voice or mood is more important than narrative. They often don't tell much of a 'story' at all. Nevertheless these 'stories' are fully formed. They aren't fragments. They aren't even 'experimental' in the sense that the term is usually used. They left me changed for having read them. Nonlinear storytelling often leaves me bored at some point, however masterfully written--I seem to need narrative drive of some kind to fully hold my interest--but with these stories I was never bored. I was rapt.
• 
  Diane S ☔

  3.5 review to follow.
• 
  Greg

  UPDATE: I've read a number of reviews, and apparently the two stories I liked best have been previously published. On the one hand, that's "money-grab" territory. On the other hand, I'm glad I was introduced to the two very odd, memorable stories here I liked very much: "Fox" and "Evie". Plus, there is a third story, "Theatre 6", here that I found particularly bothersome: it involves a fetus, ethics, and so much more and Hall never shows her hand so we never learn what she or other characters think about the issue.. Not revealing one's own thoughts about such a controversial issue seems difficult to me, how could one not slip a personal thought in somewhere? But to Hall's credit, she does not. So that's three very good stories. Plus, I gotta mention the cover color combination of deep red and turquoise is my favorite color combo and is the reason I spotted the book at the library in the first place. If I find a better collection of short stories this year, it's going to be a good one!
  
  ORIGINAL REVIEW:
  The first and last story here seem to wrap around each other to foretell some kind of change in the future of humanity. What ambition! In the opening "Mrs. Fox", we get the flipside of "Metamorphosis" when a man's wife turns into a fox. In Kafka's story, a family disowns their own son; here, Mr. Fox (who stays human) has a different and lovely/weird reaction to his wife's new form. Closing this volume we have "Evie", in which a wife loses all her sexual inhibitions to the point of physically hurting herself. Mystified doctors perform what we might think of as some kind of sadistic lobotomy. Let's face facts, readers: marriage rates are down, porn use is up, and we certainly have enough children in this world right now to keep the world going. What if Mother Nature (who always wins) is providing us a new way to look at, and enjoy, sex. What if this, today, IS the sexual revolution that never really happened in the 1960s outside of TV talk shows. What if Evie needs understanding and perhaps a few lessons in "How to Stay Healthy and Enjoy Extreme Sex"? For me, Hall raises at least two sensational new ways to see where the world might be headed: to changes in humanity that may indeed be happening within genetics, epigenetics, and event quantum physics (our reactions with each other changes...well...our reactions with each other. But I found the middle 7 not as strong as the first and last story here. So 3 stars to the stories overall, as we have two very strong stories and seven on the weak side. And about the fabulous and weird cover: wait! That is Evie's brain they are messing with! Stop that! The medical world doesn't know everything about each of us. All doctors know this, right? We aren't going to allow for another round of WW2 experimentation, right? I think that is Hall's point, I admire her ambition (one that many authors might not dare to attempt) so I have to give Hall a 4th star: she stretches and hits the mark.
• 
  Rebecca

  Three corkers; two pretty good; four been-there-read-that. My favorites were the first and last stories, “Mrs Fox” and “Evie” (winner of the BBC National Short Story Prize 2013 and shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award 2013, respectively). Both concern a fairly average marriage derailed when the wife undergoes a transformation. In the former Sophia literally turns into a fox and her husband scrambles for a way to make the relationship last. “Whatever godly or conjugal test this is,” he thinks, “he has certainly failed.” The writing is simply gorgeous in this one: “October light, no less duplicitous than any season’s. Bird calls. Plants shrivelling. The moon, palely bent on the horizon, is setting. Everything, swift or slow, continues.” (A nice touch: towards the end of the story we’re told that Sophia’s last name is Garnett; David Garnett wrote the novella Lady into Fox, which presumably provided Hall’s starting point, in 1922.) In “Evie,” Richard’s wife develops a voracious appetite for sweets and sex, and starts talking gibberish. This one is very explicit, but if you can get past that I found it both painful and powerful.
  
  I also especially liked “Case Study 2,” about a psychologist’s encounter with a boy who’s been brought up in a commune. It has faint echoes of T.C. Boyle’s
  Wild Child. “Wilderness” focuses on an intense episode of fear of heights during a trip to South Africa. In “Luxury Hour,” a new mother meets up with an old lover near the swimming pool they used to frequent and wonders where and why their lives diverged. This one reminded me of the first chapter of Rachel Cusk’s
  Transit.
  
  As for the rest? “Goodnight Nobody” was completely forgettable, and the other three are in the vague speculative/post-apocalyptic vein that’s been done to death. “Theatre 6” =
  Red Clocks; “Later, His Ghost” = The Road et al.; “One in Four” =
  Station Eleven et al. So, much as I liked three out of the nine and admire Hall’s writing in general, I can’t go higher than 3 stars.
  The Wolf Border remains the best thing I’ve read by her.
• 
  Jakub

  This a solid short story collection. The set is not even when it comes to quality - but even the weaker ones are not really bad, they just don't compare that good to the best ones. And some of them are really, really good - stories that will grip you, tug at your insides and leave a mark. Sarah Hall likes to play with genre and form which was rendered well by Dobromiła Jankowska, the Polish translator.
• 
  Alan

  4.5 stars. Beautifully written collection. It's true the stories that bookend the collection are outstanding and perhaps outshine the others, but all are good to great. Mrs Fox (first story) resembles Lady into Fox (
  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) down to being from the husband's p.o.v., the dismissal of the servant/cleaner etc., but Hall's take on it is sharp and telling. Evie (last story) also has a woman changing, but this time not into something else, but into a more sexual, uninhibited person much to the husband's initial surprise, and later delight (kind of). They are both magnificent and shocking, but I also enjoyed the climate change tale of survival and the daughter's take on her mother's job in a mortuary, the swimmer who meets an old flame, oh all of them.
• 
  Sara

  4.5 Dear Mr. Ghosh, here’s more of that climate change literature you were looking for. Have been in love with Sarah Hall since Daughters of the North, but haven’t kept up. Hall goes far beyond the tired dynamics of a specifically class-based interpretation of (hetero)sexuality and weaves in cults, gentrification, the environment, not to mention an apocalypse here and there, all of it wonderfully understated to the point where you have to double take partway through the story and thus, that sense of very real climate creep is brought home. “What did people do without access to such places less governed?” wonders a character who’s discovered a soon-to-disappear oasis from gentrification. Reading Hall feels like accessing those places on the page.
• 
  CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian

  I loved this collection of short stories. It's my first book by this author but it certainly won't be my last. I loved her writing. Hall's prose feels elegant and effortless in a way that belies the talent and skill behind the words.
  
  Reading the stories made me feel contemplative and sophisticated and stylish. Themes include a woman who turns into a fox, a woman with a terror of heights who crosses a high bridge on a hike, a post-apocalyptic world with constant very high winds, and other diverse topics, some speculative, some not.
  
  But it wasn't the content of the stories, rather it was the authenticity of the feeling that captured my attention and imagination. They are almost scary in their perceptiveness and truth. I think I'll be haunted by them for a long time.
• 
  Justine

  3,5 - 4 stars
  
  This collection was quite diverse: there was a woman who changed in a vixen, one whose behavior changed in a day, one who's afraid of heights. It was sometimes magical realism, "realism", dystopia. All of them definitely make the reader think, and it's quite depressing, but also hopeful sometimes.
  My favorites are "Mrs Fox" and "Luxury Hour" - the irony of this one!!! I loved the strangeness and beauty of the first, the desillusion of the second.
  And I love the cover!
  
  I think I'll keep reading Sarah Hall!
• 
  Liisa

  The best things about Madame Zero, Sarah Hall’s short story collection, are descriptions of marriages, magical realism and dystopia. Unfortunately these elements are found only in a couple of stories and even if they were part of the story, the lack of plot really bothered me. My absolute favorite is the first one, Mrs Fox, which set my expectations high. But I didn’t feel much of a connection to the rest of the stories, although Hall does know how to write.
• 
  Lamia

  Małe fragmenty życia, ważne dla konkretnej osoby momenty uchwycone pod mikroskop prozy. Dobre, ale nie pyszne.
• 
  Anna

  Recenzowanie zbiorów opowiadań zawsze mnie doprowadza na skraj moich zdolności pisarskich. Podczas lektury odczuwam wiele emocji, poszczególne teksty trafiają do mnie mniej lub bardziej, a gdy skończę książkę, mam w głowie mętlik i pamiętam zaledwie fragmenty albo niektóre sceny.
  
  Teksty Sarah Hall opowiadają o przeróżnych kobietach znajdujących się w przełomowych momentach ich żyć. Wszystkie te sytuacje mają związek z ich relacjami, które albo się kończą, albo wystawiane są na próbę. Hall wchodzi w środek historii, ale nie miałam trudności w podążaniu za nią, a następnie tworzy często zaskakujący świat lub scenę. Bohaterkami jej opowiadań są kobiety, które przeszły jakąś traumę, które nagle zaczynają się zachowywać zupełnie inaczej, a wręcz irracjonalnie. To będą sytuacje zagrożenia, niepewności, animalistycznego lęku o życie.
  
  Ciąg dalszy:
  https://przeczytalamksiazke.blogspot....
• 
  Alex Storer

  Disappointing, after the positive reviews and the book's own hype on the back cover. These short stories feel more like fragments of ideas or excerpts from longer books. The ideas and scenarios are very good, don't get me wrong, but something about it just feels incomplete and inconclusive.
  
  Almost all of the characters are so vague, you can't even picture them in your head - nothing fleshed out - so this makes it a cold and clinical read. That said, it has some wonderfully dark and disturbing moments.
  
  The best - and most detailed - stories are Mrs Fox and Evie (the opening and closing stories). I really got into these, although the latter verged on being pornographic, which isn't something I'd usually read! I don't mind something with an occasional dark erotic edge (such as Christopher Priest or Murakami's work, to which Madame Zero could be likened), but the frolics in Evie were certainly more explicit than I was expecting.
  
  On the whole, I enjoyed Sarah Hall's ideas and writing style very much, and wouldn't be against reading a full novel, rather than shorts.
• 
  Professor Weasel

  3 1/2 stars. Enjoyed this! Was good bedtime reading (a short story per night). I liked the post apocalyptic stories the best, mainly because they were so out of left field. My favorite (beside the dystopic ones) was the one about the woman who went swimming and ran into her ex-lover (pools are such a good place to set a story!). Some stories I did not get at all, like the one set in South Africa, or the one narrated in second person about some kind of crazy medical procedure (maybe it wasn't good to read these when I was about to go to sleep). The two prize-winning stories, "Evie" and "Mrs. Fox", were good ("Evie" is about a woman who suddenly becomes obsessed with sex, "Mrs. Fox" about a woman who turns into exactly that - both narrated from the POV of the husband). Themes seem to include women and nature and the agony of quiet painful everyday English life. All in all I liked this - was fun to see Norwich pop up as the setting at one point.
• 
  Stephen Curran

  Like an album front-loaded with its smash hit single, MADAME ZERO feels slightly off-balance. The opener, ‘Mrs. Fox’ - a tale of transmogrification which owes an obvious debt to Leonora Carrington and Angela Carter - is wonderful, relentless in its internal logic and defiantly elusive in its meaning. The central scene is beautifully wrought. After that the collection never quite reaches the same heights, which is not to say it is bad: it’s often great. The final story, ‘Evie’, is a chewy one. Another tale of transformation, it seems to deliberately rhyme with ‘Mrs. Fox’, so much so that I was anticipating another flip into fantasy. Oddly, the fact that it remains in the real world makes it far more uncomfortable and upsetting, upsetting enough to prod at my conscience: is this okay?
• 
  Anna

  “Mrs Fox” ↠ 4.5 stars
  “Case Study 2” ↠ 4 stars
  “Theatre 6” ↠ 2.5 stars
  “Wilderness” ↠ 3 stars
  “Luxury Hour” ↠ 4 stars
  “Later, His Ghost” ↠ 5 stars
  “Goodnight Nobody” ↠ 3 stars
  “One in Four” ↠ 2 stars
  “Evie” ↠ 5 stars
• 
  Jamie

  Unique and beautifully written.
  
  
  
  
  I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway and would like to thank Random House Publishing and Sarah Hall for the opportunity to read and review this set of short stories.
• 
  Cherise Wolas

  A very interesting story collection. My favorites were Mrs. Fox and Evie, women turning into other animalistic, physical beings. The writing is lovely and strong. Not all of the stories worked for me, but they were a pleasure to read.
• 
  Rachel

  Wonderful and wonderfully varied. Shadowy themes and rich language. I found something to love in each one, but my favorites were "Mrs Fox," "Wilderness," and "Evie." That last one is gonna haunt me for a while.
• 
  Agnieszka Kalus

  3,5. Opowiadania mnie męczą.
• 
  Phee

  Quite enjoyed this, though I wouldn't say I fell in love with any of the stories.
• 
  Catinca Badulescu

  3.5