| Title | : | Zerostrata |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1933929758 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781933929750 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 128 |
| Publication | : | First published April 30, 2006 |
| Awards | : | Wonderland Book Award Best Bizarro Novel (2008) |
Zerostrata Reviews
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Depressed 20-something Hansel Nothing returns to his mother's house to recapture the zest for life he had in his childhood. It's just as he remembered it. His dad has run away to become a superhero, his brother hasn't left the house in two years, and his mother is addicted to prescription drugs. While sitting in his tree house, Zerostrata, he notices a naked girl running through the woods and immediately knows his life is going to get better...
I didn't really know what to expect from Zerostrata but it exceeded my expectations by parsecs. It's part modern day fairy tale, part Royal Tenenbaums. Hansel's family are sure an interesting bunch, from his brother wanting to be their father's superhero sidekick to his mother having a friend stay with her, to the crazy therapist Dr. Blast. It very much has the feel of a Tim Burton movie.
Hansel himself is the most interesting character, a character who can't remember much of his past, unsure of his pace in the world, and longs for a return to childhood. I sure didn't expect to identify with a character in a bizarro novel but here we are. When he meets the naked running girl, Gretel Something, you know things are going to turn out okay.
Zerostrata is short and sweet and would make a good first Bizarro for someone. It's not intimidating and no one gets sodomized with anything. Easy five stars. -
Zerostrata is yet another book that should be rated higher than three, it's more of a three and a half star book. The title comes from the name of the narrators tree house that he had as a child. Now the narrator is an adult and he's returned home and finds refuge in the tree house. The entire atmosphere of the book could best be called absurd, things happen that at times feel like they are just being weird for weirds sake, but after taking in the whole book they instead all seem to fit into the whole world of the book. A very mundane world with some very jarring things that push the envelope on what is reality and what life is.
The book takes it's premise from the sort of typical starting point of the prodigal son returning home defeated and depressed. He doesn't want to be there until he discovers the girl next door and falls in love with her. This is almost the plot on the back of half of the Harlequin Romances that come out every month (the other half being women being 'raped' by rich men of various Mediterranean descents, which is apparently romantic because they are rich and handsome, and even if they have to take what they want it's all good because they have money.... oh how I wish I was a rich Greek or Sheik who could just force my will onto people and then they would love me for my anti-social criminal actions and my big fat bank account, sigh.), but the way this plot is carried out subverts the normal conventions one would expect in the story.
Now that I'm giving this story more thought and seeing it as a whole, I think I'm going to give it four stars. We need more stories that infuse the magical qualities of the world with depression and that try to find their way out of the dilemma of not wanting to be an adult in this stupid fucking world, but also realizing that being immature and returning to childhood isn't really an option either.
Boo to the adult world!! -
Do you remember the first time you saw Cinema Paradiso, It's a Wonderful Life, Amelie? These are films that people can accuse of being saccharine or silly, but not without risk of losing out on a kind of existential validation that anyone can use. Zerostrata is the same way. Fans of a darker, harsher kind of Bizarro might dismiss Zerostrata as overly cute or naively positive, but they'll miss out on a wonderful story about fighting banality and finding joy where you can, involving a treehouse, a mysterious naked girl and a pall of insanity that hangs over the protagonist's family. It is funny, sharp and positive, skillfully wrought and strong white magic. I hope this book finds a large audience, since just about anyone can benefit from its power and humor.
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I expect a lot of weird crap when I read an Andersen Prunty novel.
Heart-warming is not one of them.
Zerostrata is heart-warming...in a bizarre, naked running in the woods, bad hallucinogenics sort of way. It is a kind of romance where the weird and unthinkable becomes kind of normal. That is Prunty's forte; making the impossible seem plausible. His world is strange and impossible but the characters deal with it as it is like any other day. While the previous novels by Prunty I've read were in the horror genre, This is pure fantasy bordering into Murakami territory. Prunty continues to impress and awe me. -
I am a fan of Andersen Prunty’s books so it’s no surprise that I enjoyed Zerostrata. Mr. Prunty has a knack for telling a whacked out story and making it believable. Some of the more “out there” books that I have read really seem to try too hard to show how bizarre they are and it comes off as forced and detracts from the story. It’s as if some authors have to scream it at you, “look at me, I’m crazy and so is my book. My book is so crazy and hard to follow and if you don’t get it then you’re just a big square.” Not so with Mr. Prunty’s work. That is where his talent lies. He can tell a story that is absolutely beyond belief, yet the quirky and surreal aspects of Mr. Prunty’s writings actually enhance the story. Once again, Andersen Prunty does a fine job of representing the Bizarro movement with Zerostrata.
Lance Carbuncle, author of Smashed, Squashed, Splattered, Chewed, Chunked and Spewed -
I honestly do not know how to describe this book. Maybe as a dream? The story DOES have a plot, but that's not the best part. The best part is the surreal, meandering quality to the story. Truly bizarre things happen, but it's all very mellow and understated, in a way -- you know that everything is going to turn out just find, so just sit back and enjoy the ride.
I'm not sure what it all means -- jeez, I never do with these bizarro stories -- but I absolutely loved the style. There are so many gentle, lovely elements here, and one of the sweetest romances I've ever come across.
I would highly recommend this, but not only for fans of bizarro -- this would be a great book for anyone who is happy to immerse themselves in a story that doesn't conform to a traditional, plot driven narrative. -
Zerostrata is the nearest to a bizarro romance I expect to find. The story reminded me of a Wes Anderson film, particularly The Royal Tenenbaums, forever a favorite of mine, though much more strange. The main character is straight out of an Anderson film at least, as with his eccentric and disturbed family.
I liked Morning is Dead by the author a little more than this, though not by much. Zerostrata is not quite as dark, a little more lighthearted, a difficult thing to do in the bizarro genre in my opinion. This just shows all the more how talented Prunty is.
There is also quite a bit more humor here, as absurdity is the focus instead of horror. The characters are ridiculous but I still felt a connection. I loved the lettuce boy and the mother most of all, along with Mr. Donovan if I am remembering his name correctly. And the running girl was interesting. -
The Nothing family are quite the interesting group of characters. Bear traps, superheroes, streaking in the rain, smiley sticker pasties, graveyard dreams, salad pirates, trampolines and purple smoking cats.
But wait…there’s more. A lot more crazy train a rollin’ in this one.
Prunty is a strange cat. Dude has some serious skills to pull off the works he pumps out. In theory they should be a wreck, but somehow they aren’t. In fact, they are pretty great. Including this one. Nicely done and super weird as the Prunty usual. -
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)
As I've said here before, I'm glad that CCLaP's becoming known as a place that is friendly to absurdist and surrealist literature; these are experimental art forms to begin with, with many of the projects outright bad, making it difficult for even the good ones to get any kind of publicity. Take today's title under question, for example, mid-career author Andersen Prunty's slim Zerostrata, an almost perfect choice for anyone who likes their tales zany and bizarre, but a book hardly known by most precisely for that reason. It's ostensibly the story of "Hansel Nothing" -- yeah, I know -- a failed writer of indeterminate slacker age, who one day finds himself standing in front of the Victorian mansion where he grew up and that still houses his comically dysfunctional family, back home for the first time in years and not knowing exactly how he ended up there in the first place, parched and smelling of soot and under the hazy impression that he may or may not have recently visited Hell.
Yeah, not exactly a Jamesian Realist tale, you quickly realize, especially after meeting a mother who permanently goes around balancing on top of her head a live cat frozen in fear, and especially after getting introduced to the "Zerostrata" of the book's title, a childhood treehouse/fortress that Hansel has apparently decided to move into full-time as an adult. Ah, but see, that's the beauty of absurdist literature when it's done well; it ends up finding and holding an emotional truth at its center anyway, no matter how ridiculous some of the actual plot details get. Notice how real it feels, for example, when Hansel falls in love with a mysterious stranger, despite it happening by him spying her from the treehouse each night as she jogs naked through the neighborhood, her "honor" preserved by a group of surprisingly vicious prepubescent boys in pirate outfits; and by the time later in the book that the two finally make love for the first time, you can't help but be charmed and moved by learning that her name is in fact "Gretel Something." This is a reason I like such literature so much, is that when an author gets it right, they can tell almost fairytale-type stories that nonetheless come out more truthful than even many "straight accounts" we hear in our lives. Because c'mon, admit it; when was the last time you heard a friend say, "I got in a big fight the other day, and it was completely and utterly my fault for acting like a jerk?" It's much easier to have sympathetic characters who can say such things within a story like Zerostrata, especially when the character in question is leaping through the window of his psychiatrist's office at the same time, somehow landing on a bright orange trampoline that just happens to be located several miles away.
I don't have a longer review to write today, simply because it's not a long book; it's a novella more than a novel, really, 130 pages of big type that can be read in a single afternoon. But don't think the short write-up means I didn't like it, because I did; I liked it quite a bit, in fact, and would even go so far as to say that it's the perfect book for anyone who likes but is ultimately disappointed by the work of Augusten Burroughs, despite me in particular freaking hating the work of Augusten Burroughs. Because, see, I actually like the concept of what Burroughs is going for in his books -- a childhood so unbelievably horrific that it approaches at times the level of an absurdist comedy just on its own -- just that I think Burroughs should've done what Prunty does here and make the tales literally ludicrous ones, instead of slapping "memoir" on the cover and trying to sell a pile of badly-edited magical-realism pieces as a "true story." By being honest about what this is -- ridiculously untrue fiction -- Prunty actually makes this more mysterious than any of Burroughs' work, precisely because it makes you wonder what parts of it might be true, what bits have been twisted and reshaped until resembling the funhouse ride now on display. That's why I say that Zerostrata will be especially satisfying to those who enjoyed but were ultimately frustrated by, say, Running With Scissors; here the silly stories and hamfisted psychoanalysis is done on purpose, instead of being unintentionally funny like with the worst of Burroughs. If that sounds like something you'd enjoy, you'll want to make sure and pick up a copy of the light and entertaining Zerostrata right away.
Out of 10: 8.1, or 9.1 for fans of absurdist literature -
A great book I couldn't put down and finished with just one break for lunch. Not too many books grab me like that. This is an amazing story, that as someone else stated, could totally be a bizarro Tim Burton unconventional love story. I had never read Prunty previously and I gotta say the man is an amazing storyteller, the story at times does play out like a dream world, but this bizarro dreamworld, called Grayson, Prunty builds well, I never once questioned the quirky things going on around the main character Hansel Nothing: the stoned bus driver, Hansel's dad the self named superhero The Commander, the teenage lettuce pirate gang, Dr. Blast the quirky non-licensed therapist who literally moves his business into a cardboard box, these are all minor characters who make the strange world just fun.
The main meat of the story is Hansel returning home from somewhere, he doesn't quite recall, he feels almost lost but likes being home. That coming home aspect plays a huge part of this story. He feels drawn to nostalgia of his childhood and his self-named tree house, for whom the book is named after, Zerostrata, which I also thought was a pretty cool centerpiece for the story, as everyone can relate to loving some little tidbit of their childhood like a tree house. While contemplating life he encounters a woman out for an evening run naked behind his childhood home/Zerostrata and feels drawn to her, almost like she would complete the puzzle that is his life and the rest is history.
This book definitely deserves a second read and is going on my favorites shelf. Loved every bit of it, thanks Prunty for the read. -
Okay, for some reason that is totally lost on me, this book has a really high rating, which is why I bought it in the first place. And don't get me wrong, I dig surrealism. But there's a difference between a carefully crafted surrealist/absurd story, and a rudimentary plot where you look around the room as you write it, asking, "what weird thing can I put in this scene? Lettuce? Okay, lettuce." The writing is clumsy at best. People who think Prunty is good should really read Yourgrau (I will preach his wisdom for the rest of my life).
Conclusion: Ugh. Thank god it was so short. -
Imagine a movie written by Wes Anderson that is directed by Michel Gondry - you'll have something close to Andersen Prunty's "Zerostrata".
The book focuses around a lost young man named Hansel who is trying his hardest to find his place in the world. After a few years of soul searching, Hansel returns home in hopes to rekindle any kind of happiness that may have been left over from his childhood.
But his strange, eccentric family doesn't make it an easier on him. His father has become a superhero, his mother is a basketcase who suffers from all of the side-effects listed on the side of her medicine bottles, and his brother has been away from the family for just as long as he has, except he has never left the house - instead he locks himself in the basement and composes noise symphonies. His only hope of happiness lies in his childhood treehouse, Zerostrata.
Hansel eventually becomes infatuated with a girl named, yup - you guessed it, Gretel. Their story is touching, fun, and out of this world (literally).
Prunty is a bizarro master. The reader instantly becomes emotionally entangled with his characters and where they're going.
If you think bizarro means odd, horrific, and ultraviolent - read Zerostrata. You'll never look at bizarro fiction the same again. -
While I haven’t read everything by Andersen Prunty, Zerostrata is so far my favorite. It’s a weird fable for adults. It’s a horror story that’s more like a love story. It’s a love story that’s more like a horror story. It really is just plain magical.
Prunty leading man, Hansel Nothing, is returning home to his supremely dysfunctional family. He doesn’t know where he’s been but he definitely knows why he left home. Hansel is kind of a blank slate, but that’s because this story is about discovery. He’s a social outcast and I think most people can relate to his misery. It’s no wonder he’s lonely.
Hansel meets Dr. Blast, who’s something like a human cartoon of insanity/wisdom, and returns to the one happy spot he’s ever known: his tree house called Zerostrata. Through returning to Zerostrata, Hansel soon meets Gretel. Usually I’m unfazed by “star-crossed lovers” in fiction, but Prunty really makes this relationship something special and unique. Their romance always feels natural, even when the scenery around them becomes a surreal wonderland.
Zerostrata is filled with magical imagery and symbols of lost childhood and true love. It’s bizarro fiction at its best, when it’s something you’ve never seen before and definitely weren’t expecting. It’s an emotional and intelligent fairy tale romance, and proof of bizarro fiction’s range of weirdness. -
Imagine a movie written by Wes Anderson that is directed by Michel Gondry - you'll have something close to Andersen Prunty's "Zerostrata".
The book focuses around a lost young man named Hansel who is trying his hardest to find his place in the world. After a few years of soul searching, Hansel returns home in hopes to rekindle any kind of happiness that may have been left over from his childhood.
But his strange, eccentric family doesn't make it an easier on him. His father has become a superhero, his mother is a basketcase who suffers from all of the side-effects listed on the side of her medicine bottles, and his brother has been away from the family for just as long as he has, except he has never left the house - instead he locks himself in the basement and composes noise symphonies. His only hope of happiness lies in his childhood treehouse, Zerostrata.
Hansel eventually becomes infatuated with a girl named, yup - you guessed it, Gretel. Their story is touching, fun, and out of this world (literally).
Prunty is a bizarro master. The reader instantly becomes emotionally entangled with his characters and where they're going.
If you think bizarro means odd, horrific, and ultraviolent - read Zerostrata. You'll never look at bizarro fiction the same again. -
Andersen Prunty's warm romance set in a town called Grayson has, like a one-night stand, given me mixed feelings.
Hansel Nothing is the lucky recipient of this romantic plot, though before the words "That was when I saw her" end an early chapter, he returns to his childhood home. His mother and his brother, Zasper, in drug-dependent and floor-dwelling disrepair, have decayed as much as the eponymous tree house, Zerostrata. Hansel does not feel disgusted by this return to old memories, however, especially not when he returns to Zerostrata's loft. Up there, he mutters the aforementioned line when he sees a luminescent woman running naked down the street, and with some cynical advice from his psychologist he finds the courage to pursue her. Literally. The first chase proves fruitless, though with continued chases a romance does blossom between Hansel and the woman who introduces herself as Gretel Something. What flows from there is an imaginative experience, including the likes of the father of the Nothing family who has left to become a superhero, a ladder to the moon, and more. Dr. Blast, the aforementioned psychologist, may be the most interesting character of his kind ever encountered in fiction. In his first appearance alone he wins a make-you-say-something-first contest with Hansel using only a pair of skimpy black underwear and his flexing butt cheeks before suggesting a pistol duel in case of suicidal thoughts and jumping through a window in case of actually wanting to turn your life around. Towards the end, Zerostrata takes on a very dreamlike quality which was comforting to read through. Such is Zerostrata's main strong point - it is an uplifting read that does make a point to show that Hansel's life, and the lives of his family members, will be making much-needed improvements.
Because of how uplifting Zerostrata is, it feels Grinch-like to make a list of things I felt were flawed. There were many times where I was more interested in what was going on around Hansel and Gretel than what they were getting involved with. The rest of Hansel's family, it seems, could have made for a story all on their own and with just as much of an uplifting quality. There could have probably been stories for the kids made of lettuce and the stoned bus driver, as well - which brings me to this point: it is true that out-of-nowhere elements make more sense in later chapters, but... kids, dressed as pirates, made of lettuce, who decide to feed Hansel a salad instead of beating him up. It happens sometime shortly before the halfway point. Then there's one last complaint, which sadly runs into what may be one of the most pivotal moments of the romantic part of the plot: the "Raindrop Conversation" chapter, which is done entirely in dialogue. Without mentioning details, I will say that it was here that I found just how damn much Hansel and Gretel sound alike. There may be a well-intended effect to this, but in practice it made it difficult to follow who was saying what until I just said, "Eh, I can just pick and choose." It doesn't help that going back through the book showed this to be very much the case most of the time anyway.
So, with those mixed feelings still in mind I can nonetheless say that Zerostrata is a book which needs to be read at least once. Its soothing subject matter mixed with charismatic strangeness is well worth the effort to keep going even if, like it was for me, the journey is a bit rocky. -
All the Bizarro I have read since being introduced to the genre has had some sort of depressing element to it. Either a tragedy right from the start, or a bleak ending, or some sort of horrible event in the middle that taints the story overall. These are not bad elements, each has worked in its way to tell the story the author intended.
Andersen Prunty, however, has written a strange tale that starts out with a tone of "meh" and becomes increasingly bright and hopeful as the reader goes further. "Zerostrata" is quite possibly the happiest Bizarro book I have read.
Our narrator and protagonist, Hansel Nothing, returns to his childhood home after a ten-year absence to find things have physically changed very little. His father left to become a superhero. His brother stays in the basement creating "New Music." His mother indulges in pills, wearing a cat on her head, and sleeping with a strong but hairy man in his father's absence. None greet him like a prodigal son, more like someone who was a bit late from an errand.
Hansel also finds his childhood treehouse, the titular "Zerostrata" still soaring above the backyard. He decides to take up residence within it, and from its lofty heights he sees Her. A girl who runs, rain or shine, naked through the neighborhood every evening. This will begin a strange, endearing, and beautiful courtship. But only after Hansel makes the choice to do things differently in his life.
There are so many wonderful things that happen within this book's short 130-odd pages. So many themes: love, finding your passion, letting go of the past, redemption, forgiveness, the list can go on and on. Prunty has packed a lot of dense and powerful meaning into "Zerostrata," but at no time does a reader feel overwhelmed by anything other than sharing in Hansel's increasing joy. It is simply a beautiful story that uses some of Bizarro's most common conventions to create a joyful reading experience.
"Zerostrata" should not be missed. I found its overarching message to be more inspiring than the Bible. That's not to say Prunty should be considered bigger than Jesus; just that he managed to tell a story of love and goodness and changing your world for the better without heavy-handed philosophy or an even heavier thousand-plus pages of hardbound prose.
It is simply beautiful. -
I want to give this book five stars. I even have the power to give this book five stars. Perhaps I will, but I feel like that special thing, that thing that really is just some stupid chemical reaction in my brain that says five stars you idiot just didn't happen here.
I love the main character. I love that he ignores the fact that everything around him is completely absurd. Not because he doesn't realize (a poor plot device in my opinion), but because he doesn't seem to see a particularly good reason to dwell on it. at moment you can tell his thought process isn't really different from the "WHAT THE FUCK" that the reader is thinking, but he just forgets about that and does what he has always done.
I have decided that I am in fact giving this book 5 stars.
The fact of the matter is if you have ever realized that you have not been happy since childhood you should go home and read this book in your tree house. I do not have a tree house, but I do have a loft bed and a messy room which is similar or I identify with Jasper. I also have a brother who sleeps in closets so maybe I can just relate to the book. Do not under any circumstances pretend to be an adult when you attempt to read this book. -
Can you go home again? If you do, are you sure that you wanted to? Hansel Nothing returns to his family's depressing home after ten years of doing things that he can't remember. When he meets the girl of his dreams (actually, it's someone else's dream) Hansel is introduced to a world where anything is possible. I adore this story. Simply, it's a story about life, love and the pursuit of happiness. It's also about shedding the past and moving on. Oh, and trampolines. It's also about trampolines.
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Zerostrata is more than a good looking book. It's heartwarming and overflowing with bizarro love.Buy it and cherish it.
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Wonderful writing; such a sweet story.
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Wow - this book blew me away, and it was totally unexpected.
Highly recommend this to everyone to give bizarro a try. -
It was so weird. I never read a book where nothing made sense yet at the same time everythint made sense. I don't even know what to rate it. It wasn't terrible. Mostly just meh.
Definitely a fever dream story. -
That was the second most bizarre book I've ever read.
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Andersen Prunty's Zerostrata is an amazing work that ties surreal literature, a coming of age story, and Gimm's fairytales in an original way that is an absolute pleasure to read. The characters and scenes are wonderfully dynamic and interesting. I read this work in one sitting, and I plan on picking up as many other works by this author as I possibly can.
The plot of Zerostrata is a dreamlike romp. It follows Hansel Nothing as he wanders around his home town trying to remember his past and where he has been the last ten years. The plot keeps throwing new situations at the reader that are at once surreal and hard to grasp, but at the same time oddly familiar. This book reads like an afternoon daydream, and it is all the better for it.
The characters are amazing. The main character, and narrator, Hansel Nothing does a wonderful job of carrying the story. His grounded view of the world helps ease the reader into the many oddities that are presented in the story. The supporting cast is equally as compelling. There is Hansel's mother running around with a cat on her head, his brother Zasper in the basement creating his own musical movement, and the enigmatic Dr. Blast just to name a few. Everyone of them adds something to the story and all of them have great bits of dialogue.
The themes of this novel are what really bring it all together. The main theme running through the work is this sense of a lost childhood. Hansel spends most of the work trying to reclaim the bits of his childhood that he held the most dear. The theme is made stronger thanks to the re-imagining of a Grimm's fairytale, and the ever present treehouse Zerostrata.
This is definitely the kind of story that you will want to carry with you for years to come. It is deep and symbolic enough to please any literary nerd out there, while still having a wonderful enough story to be approachable to anyone. -
This was a really great book. The entire thing felt like reading a dream. The characters were so lovable, the dialogue was great, especially between Hansel and his brother. I really didn't expect it to be so sweet. It was like a mix between Running with scissors and a Murakami novel. It was just so...endearing, you couldn't help but love it.
I will say this though, in my opinion the love story actually got kind of distracting, but this book was still amazing. A fast read, but so totally worth it. The sweetest damn bizzaro I ever read ;) -
“And I don’t ever really want to know you.
What do you mean?
If you can ever completely know someone then that means that person has stopped changing, has stopped thinking, has stopped doing anything it is that makes a person unique and individual. The fun is in getting to know someone. Experiencing things with them, watching them change and just hoping they don’t change so much they no longer interest you.”
