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Overview
From its opening pages - when hero cop Brian Remy wakes up to find he's shot himself in the head - novelist Jess Walter takes us on a harrowing tour of a city and a country shuddering through the aftershocks of a devastating terrorist attack. As the smoke slowly clears, Remy finds that his memory is skipping, lurching between moments of lucidity and days when he doesn't seem to be living his own life at all. The landscape around him is at once fractured and oddly familiar: a world dominated by a Machiavellian mayor known as "The Boss," and peopled by gawking celebrities, anguished policemen peddling First Responder cereal, and pink real estate divas hyping the spoils of tragedy. Remy himself has a new girlfriend he doesn't know, a son who pretends he's dead, and an unsettling new job chasing a trail of paper scraps for a shadowy intelligence agency known as the Department of Documentation. Whether that trail will lead Remy to an elusive terror cell - or send him circling back to himself - is only one of the questions posed by this provocative yet deeply human novel.Synopsis
The Zero is a groundbreaking novel, a darkly comic snapshot of our times that is already being compared to the works of Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller.
From its opening pages—when hero cop Brian Remy wakes up to find he's shot himself in the head—novelist Jess Walter takes us on a harrowing tour of a city and a country shuddering through the aftershocks of a devastating terrorist attack. As the smoke slowly clears, Remy finds that his memory is skipping, lurching between moments of lucidity and days when he doesn't seem to be living his own life at all. The landscape around him is at once fractured and oddly familiar: a world dominated by a Machiavellian mayor known as "The Boss," and peopled by gawking celebrities, anguished policemen peddling First Responder cereal, and pink real estate divas hyping the spoils of tragedy. Remy himself has a new girlfriend he doesn't know, a son who pretends he's dead, and an unsettling new job chasing a trail of paper scraps for a shadowy intelligence agency known as the Department of Documentation. Whether that trail will lead Remy to an elusive terror cell—or send him circling back to himself—is only one of the questions posed by this provocative yet deeply human novel.
From a novelist of astounding talent, The Zero is an extraordinary story of how our trials become our transgressions, of how we forgive ourselves and whether or not we should.
The New York Times - Janet Maslin
The best of The Zero breathes life into the author s idea of post-9/11 life as a fever dream for its characters, "some kind of cultural illness they all shared." It wonders why that dream is so enveloping. This book s heightened paranoia invites the asking of more questions, from why cellphones need to take pictures to why a piece of cake is so much more than its component parts.
Editorials
“Galley Talk” Publishers Weekly
“Exquisitely written . . . Like a paranoid Being There, The Zero is suspenseful, satisfying and unforgettable.”New York Times
"A ridiculously talented writer."Entertainment Weekly
"This is political satire at its best: scathing, funny, dark. Grade: A."USA Today
"Aa satire/tragedy that Franz Kafka and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. might appreciate."BookPage
"Perceptive, ingenious satire…fascinating and important"Galley Talk” Publishers Weekly
“Exquisitely written . . . Like a paranoid Being There, The Zero is suspenseful, satisfying and unforgettable.”Janet Maslin
The best of The Zero breathes life into the author’s idea of post-9/11 life as a fever dream for its characters, "some kind of cultural illness they all shared." It wonders why that dream is so enveloping. This book’s heightened paranoia invites the asking of more questions, from why cellphones need to take pictures to why a piece of cake is so much more than its component parts.— The New York Times
John McNally
Walter is an immensely talented writer. In April, his Citizen Vince won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best novel, and now he's written a new thriller not only with a conscience but also full of dead-on insights into our culture and its parasitic response to a national tragedy.— The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
Walter's darkly satiric and surprisingly poignant novel about heroic policeman Brian Remy's nightmare journey through a post- 9/11 New York City, is given a flawless rendition by Graybill. Key to his success is the voice he has selected for the hapless, mind- and body-damaged Remy, who awakes from a failed suicide attempt with a head wound, a shattered memory and the slowly growing understanding that he's involved in a political plot as evil as it is bizarre. Walter's prose keeps Remy drifting from confusion to self-doubt, guilt and, eventually, outrage—and Graybill hits all the right notes as he adds the dimension of sound. He's just as effective in delineating the fragile otherworldly wistfulness of Remy's girlfriend, his boss's bombast, the self-absorbed nattering of his motor-mouth ex-partner-turned-TV-pitchman and an assortment of accents and attitudes from a cadre of sycophantic, sinister, sadistic and generally smarmy secret agents—both American and Middle Eastern. It's a brilliant teaming of the right narrator to the right material. Simultaneous release with the Regan hardcover (Reviews, July 24). (Sept.)
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