The Zero (P.S.) [Kindle Edition]

Jess Walter (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. 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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Numerous thrillers have drawn on 9/11, but most have used those all-too-horrific events only as a frame. Walter digs deeper. This discombobulating but remarkably imaginative novel never names bin Laden or even the date, but we know where we are. Bits of paper from the explosions continue to rain down from the sky, and rescue workers continue to look for bodies at Ground Zero (or, the Zero, as the cops and firefighters who were there refer to it). One of those cops, Brian Remy, opens the novel by shooting himself in the head. But, minutes later, he can't remember doing it. Remy suffers from what he calls "gaps"--memory lapses in which he has no idea why he is doing what he's doing. These gaps are the main narrative device in the novel, and they take some getting used to, as the reader is every bit as affected by the blackouts as Remy. Gradually, both character and reader begin to piece things together: Remy has been hired by the "Boss" to lead a secret "documentation recovery" effort aimed at finding a link between the terrorists and a woman working in one of the towers. But to what end? Even in his lucid moments, Remy doesn't understand his assignment, which seems to have something to do with "applying models of randomness to the patterns in paper burns." There is plenty of stinging political satire here, but beyond that, Walter has taken the terrorist thriller into new territory, mixing the surreal cityscape of Blade Runner with a touch of Kafka and coming up with what may be the perfect metaphor for the way we experience today's world. Like Remy, we suffer from gaps whenever we watch the news or try to make sense of international affairs: randomness reigns. This isn't a perfect novel, but it takes a game shot at re-creating the emotional reality of the post-9/11 world. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 286 KB
• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books (October 13, 2009)
• Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000UOJTZ8
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #261,096 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Jess Walter is the author of five novels, most recently 'The Financial Lives of the Poets' -- Time Magazine's #2 novel of 2009. He was a 2006 National Book Award Finalist for 'The Zero' and won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for best novel in 2005 for 'Citizen Vince.' His work has been translated into 20 languages. He lives with his family in Spokane, Washington.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I Love Jess Walter's Writing, but this Novel Really Disappointed Me, September 18, 2006

By 

Thriller Lover (Las Vegas, Nevada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Zero: A Novel (Hardcover)

First of all, let me emphasize that I believe Jess Walter is one of the brightest lights in fiction today. He is a remarkably talented writer, and deserves mainstream success. I thoroughly enjoyed CITIZEN VINCE, his Edgar-winning novel from last year.

THE ZERO: A NOVEL, however, is nowhere near as good as CITIZEN VINCE.

Why not? Let me list the reasons:

(1) THE ZERO has no coherent plot. Brian Remy is a heroic 9/11 cop who suffers frequent "gaps" in his memory after the terrorist attack. As a result, he drifts through the entire story of this novel without really understandng why he is doing what he's doing. This leads to a large number of disjointed scenes with almost no context provided. As a result, this novel has no narrative thread, which makes for a rather disorienting (and ultimately tedious) read. Put bluntly, this novel was very hard for me to finish.

(2) THE ZERO has no likable central character. Who is Remy? What is he doing? What are his motivations? Why is he torturing terror suspects and cheating on his girlfriend? The reader never knows, because Remy himself does not know, due to his frequent memory loss. As a result, the central character of this novel is remarkably vacuous and impossible to identify with. This book has a hollow center.

(3) THE ZERO has cartoonish supporting characters. Pretty much all the supporting characters in this novel are exaggerated stereotypes. We have embarssingly macho, stupid police characters. We have extremely cynical politicians and greedy businessmen. We have Remy's pseudo-intellectual son, who pretends that Remy died at 9/11. None of these characters is even remotely believable. All of the dialogue is stilted and unrealistic. I realize this is a satirical novel, but what happened to the brilliant three-dimesional characters of CITIZEN VINCE? They do not exist in THE ZERO, with the possible exception of the girlfriend character, the only likable person in the book.

(4) THE ZERO does not resolve anything. What is the point of this novel? The ending resolves little and is quite dissatisfying. Is Jess Walter condemning post 9/11 America? He makes fun of "First Responder" breakfast cereal, but is there any real life example of such crass commercialization of 9/11? Sure, people are greedy and materialistic, but what does that have to do with 9/11? The message of this book is muddled, and I don't want to buy "Cliff's Notes" to decipher what Walter is trying to communicate.

This book isn't all bad. The prose is well crafted, and Walter does a very effective job of describing the devasation at Ground Zero. There are some decently written scenes in this book, but they just don't add up to a good story.

In short, a major disappointment from a great writer. This is the type of novel that will impress critics more than readers. I hope the next book is better.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A devastating novel, May 20, 2008

By 

Nathan Knapp_Voronwë (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Zero: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)

Let me say first that this novel does not make sense in the way your average novel will. It is probably not as patriotic as anything else you've read that retells the story of 9/11. Or as sympathetic. But it is definitely the most compassionate. THE ZERO tells the story of Brian Remy, a cop who was there when it all happened - and in the subsequent months sees his life begin to unravel as he suffers gaps in his waking consciousness (in much the same way as the main character in the film, MEMENTO). Remy's waking reality is the world gone surreal.

Remy can't figure out what's happening to him, and it's nearly impossible to what's real and what's not. Every time things he begins to understand what's going on, he blacks out; and so does the reader. This leads to what is possibly the most introspective novel written in the past ten years. THE ZERO will knock you off your feet. Walter's writing (in the tradition of Kafka) is precise, beautiful, destructive, and even mesmerizing. If this novel doesn't make it into the canon of great American literature, it'll be a crying shame.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greater than Zero, November 9, 2006

By 

Dando (Seattle, Wa USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Zero: A Novel (Hardcover)

A perfect 10. The author takes the reader on a gritty, black edged, rocket fueled ride across the abyss of Ground Zero. And what a ride it is! The audacity of writing a novel loaded with satire and black humor on the outfall of a police officer's dealing with post WTC trauma and the politics of cleanup culminating with the sharp irony of survivorship. And it is just not the WTC site that is being "cleaned up". With a daring writing style and sharp characters that enhance a chaos of events, the author succeeds in creating a brute and edgy novel that rivals Catch 22's theater of the absurd.