Madame Zero audiobook

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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?

I've read and enjoyed a few of Sarah Hall's novels, but, if anything, I think the short format suits her more. These are darkly entertaining tales of wilderness, wildness and the wild within - from a husband whose wife transforms into a fox, to a man fighting for survival in a future age when climate change has caused winds that have devastated the country (this one was set in Norwich, where I live - looking out the window now I can just imagine it!), to a girl in the 1980s contemplating the killing of a neighbour's baby by a dog. I thoroughly enjoyed these stories, they are thought-provoking but easy to read, and they make you want to bring some animalistic wildness into life!

3.5