Madame Zero: 9 Stories

British prize-winning author Sarah Hall has compiled a series of nine compelling short stories whose themes challenge the imagination while the musical language absorbs the reader. In these bizarre yet spellbinding tales, the fantastic and the mundane are blended into surreal settings that convert fantasy into human emotional reactions. The first story centers on the husband’s committed love and care for his wife who transforms into a fox. Another story shares a similar theme of man’s obsessive longing for his mate when a wife infects her husband and friends with a carnal mania, unaware that the lunacy is caused by an organic growth on the brain. Or take the story of a pre-adolescent youngster, intrigued yet frightened by the sudden appearance of death in the neighborhood, who is the daughter of a mother working in a mortuary. What can be more shocking than for a new mother to suddenly encounter a former lover, or visit a therapist who loses a patient and in turn needs treatment? Wander out into a dystopian world where all is rack and ruin to find a surviving optimist squatting within the destruction, seeking a gift a for another survivor. A story set in the wilderness of South Africa examines an extreme phobia of heights and the associations this fear exposes. With crisp language, strong chords of short sentences, this writer creates emotional rhapsodies describing the human condition in unconventional scenarios.