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Exit Zero: Stories
Twelve delightfully strange, haunting stories from the acclaimed, oracular author of
Beautyland
.
Death-shaped entities—with all of their humor and strangeness—haunt the twelve stories in Exit Zero. Vampires, ghost girls, fathers, blank spaces, day-old peaches, and famous paintings all pierce through their world into ours, reminding us to pay attention! and look alive! and offering many other flashes of wisdom from the oracle and author of Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino.
Death-shaped entities—with all of their humor and strangeness—haunt the twelve stories in Exit Zero. Vampires, ghost girls, fathers, blank spaces, day-old peaches, and famous paintings all pierce through their world into ours, reminding us to pay attention! and look alive! and offering many other flashes of wisdom from the oracle and author of Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino.
Audible Audio
First published April 22, 2025
131 people are currently reading
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About the author
Marie-Helene Bertino
12 books976 followersMarie-Helene Bertino was born and raised in Philadelphia. She is the author of the novels Beautyland (Best Books of 2024 (So Far) NYTimes, TIME Magazine, Esquire, Elle)), Parakeet (NYTimes Editor's Choice) and 2 a.m. at The Cat's Pajamas, and the short story collection Safe as Houses. Awards include The O. Henry Prize, The Pushcart Prize, The Iowa Short Fiction Award, The Mississippi Review Prize, The Center for Fiction NYC Emerging Writers Fellowship and The Frank O'Connor International Short Story Fellowship in Cork, Ireland. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, Electric Literature, Granta, Guernica, BOMB, among many others. She is the recipient of fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook Writers Colony, The Center For Fiction NYC, and Sewanee Writers Conference, where she was the Walter E. Dakin fellow. In June 2021, "Disrupting Realism," an online master class and panel she designed to make graduate level resources available at no charge, was attended by 1,300 people. She has taught in the Creative Writing programs of NYU, The New School, and Institute for American Indian Arts. She currently teaches in the Creative Writing Department at Yale University. More info: www.mariehelenebertino.com
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 157 reviews
February 22, 2025
When I was 15, I joined a program at my school that let me attend a nearby community college instead of high school while receiving credit for both. I went from being surrounded by an endless parade of teenage cliques and venomous social circles that all seemed to ignore me in equal measure to a reality where I was surrounded by people of all ages and all backgrounds mingling as if it was just the most normal thing imaginable.
The first course that I signed up for was very plainly called “Creative Writing”, but even that stark description felt light years ahead of the types of English classes offered by my high school that felt like they doubled as prison sentences more than being an exploration of literature, writing or language. The instructor of my new class was a short man with cigarette-yellow stains on both his greying moustache and his fingertips, that favoured the plaid stylings of some decade before my own time. He carried the kind of small, open-ended leather case that made it easy to see a mess of papers overflowing in every direction and a stack of worn-out books with an endless amount of post-it note annotations jutting out from what looked like every single page.
The majority of my writing class was made up of adults that were coming back to school after more than a decade away from their own graduations, while the rest had just finished high school and were simply taking the next step before applying to a university or choosing a vocation. In other words, for pretty much everyone outside of myself, this was a blow-off class; a stepping stone that all of them would likely have preferred to leap over on their way to a diploma. They barely wanted to be there to begin with and after the first ten minutes of that opening class, you could sense that feeling deepen into something almost antagonistic, something tense and unforgiving.
Our instructor was a man of few words, but the words that he did speak, he chose carefully and dictated them with an emphasis that clashed with the surroundings of our campus. It gave him a sort of awkward cadence, much like that of a Rankin-Bass villain explaining their next plan to inflict evil upon some unknowing entity. His conviction to his position and his love of the written word was obvious in that way that lends to easy criticism from those that seek out the easy targets of the world. After years of suffering through English classes taught by disinterested baseball coaches that the school needed on their payroll, I was enthralled by each word that spilled from his mouth. He instructed us to read the first entry from what was to become our main textbook, that year’s edition of The Best American Short Stories. It was story that followed an unnamed protagonist as they are led on a comprehensive job orientation at an office where something discomforting is clearly lurking under the well-managed and clean facade being presented to the new employee.
That first short story didn’t divide the class, but instead it united them in open arms against our instructor. During the next session, the air in the room was rank with bitter complaints that the story didn’t make sense, that it didn’t go anywhere, that it was pointless, that it was creepy, that it was unsettling and so on. He weathered all of these criticisms with a blank look on his face and then announced that I was the only one in class that hadn’t said a word or offered my opinion on the story. To this day, I don’t remember what I said in that panicked, on-the-spot moment as I told the class why I felt like “Orientation” was beyond brilliant and like a wake-up call to my senses, but I will forever remember the smile that crept over his face as he simply replied to me, “Yes, you nailed it.”
In 2024, Marie-Helene Bertino released a novel titled Beautyland that promised the story of a girl growing up with the belief that she exists as an alien sending communications back to her home planet reporting on humanity and all of its eccentricities. It’s a concept that many authors would have tackled and either revelled in the hilarity of potentials for misunderstanding or wallowed in the disbelief that we as humans so willingly cause each other pain in so many unique ways. Beautyland chose a different path and its central character experienced the wealth of human experience and emotion in ways that left me shouting “YES!” to an empty room as I read or cowering in the corner of my bedroom as I desperately kept reading while hoping for a resolution that took away the sinking feeling in my stomach as I worried for, adored and felt proud of her experiencing this thing we call life. As I handed a copy of Beautyland to a family member this past Christmas, I said, “You love coming of age stories? Well, get ready for the ultimate one.”
Short stories are a notoriously difficult place to work in as a writer. You aren’t given the space to spread your proverbial legs and take your time to get to the point somewhere in the 491st page of your almost never-ceasing tome. The impact needs to be felt almost immediately and has to grip the reader for several pages before it drops you off a cliff and walks away without a single thought or regret for where you land. As I crept into the first pages of Marie-Helene Bertino’s new collection of short stories, Exit Zero, I was assaulted by “Marry The Sea”, a story told in short vignettes that all appear disparate and disjointed until the moment you grasp the fabric that connects them. It’s creepy, it’s unsettling, it’s Lynchian and it’s astonishing. It’s the first story from my community college creative writing course all over again and it’s glorious in it’s execution and it’s impact.
Bertino has a gift for writing almost like she is actually an alien, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Where most writers would look at a scene and approach it head on, she sneaks up on the sides and finds a way to describe things inside of a story that would normally feel unapproachable while also highlighting the multitude of smaller stories hidden inside of the larger one at play. For decades, people have marvelled at how much Hemmingway was able to say by not saying anything in his infamous six word short story, but Bertino deserves credit for the sheer amount of life and world-building that she is able to cram into just a few short pages. Not only could I visualize all of these characters and their surroundings, but I was left with an intense feeling of loss when my time with them had ended.
From the story of the septuagenarian divorcee that steals a painting of a famous singer in her first act of unmarried defiance to the story of the young woman stuck in a never-ending Groundhog Day style loop of one specific twenty-seven minute episode of Cheers (featuring the most chilling moment I’ve read in a book in years thanks to Frasier Crane and his priest from season two of Fleabag awareness of the fourth wall) to the tale of a woman making her way to her friend’s coffee shop as her ex-partners rain down from the sky and crash to the ground around her, Bertino’s stories relish in a surreal playfulness that straddles the line between what feels possible and what feels like something from a dream that you can’t seem to wake up from.
But no matter the level of humor or the often unavoidable feelings of anxiousness that each of the stories featured in Exit Zero conveys, Bertino is supremely adept at finding the heart of each of her characters and exploring the unanswered questions and the tears at the mental and emotional seams that plague each of them. In fact, it was one simple line at the end of one story (”When did you cut your hair?”) that left me completely unmoored and found me taking more than a day to recover from the way it pushed me off balance. I dare anyone to read the title story from this collection, a tale of a woman cleaning the house of her recently deceased father, and not come away a different sort of person than were before.
The joy and ache that one feels from being allowed the company of Bertino’s words might only be able to be described aptly enough by the author herself: “Is life very fragile or very resilient?” Writing that has the ability to produce this sort of profound effect in its readers deserves to be celebrated and I am certain that I will be championing the words that Marie-Helene Bertino arranges and expresses so beautifully for the rest of my own time as someone that has always felt out of time and out of step with this plane of existence.
Thank you to both NetGalley and FSG Originals for the chance to read and review an advanced copy of this extraordinary work.
The first course that I signed up for was very plainly called “Creative Writing”, but even that stark description felt light years ahead of the types of English classes offered by my high school that felt like they doubled as prison sentences more than being an exploration of literature, writing or language. The instructor of my new class was a short man with cigarette-yellow stains on both his greying moustache and his fingertips, that favoured the plaid stylings of some decade before my own time. He carried the kind of small, open-ended leather case that made it easy to see a mess of papers overflowing in every direction and a stack of worn-out books with an endless amount of post-it note annotations jutting out from what looked like every single page.
The majority of my writing class was made up of adults that were coming back to school after more than a decade away from their own graduations, while the rest had just finished high school and were simply taking the next step before applying to a university or choosing a vocation. In other words, for pretty much everyone outside of myself, this was a blow-off class; a stepping stone that all of them would likely have preferred to leap over on their way to a diploma. They barely wanted to be there to begin with and after the first ten minutes of that opening class, you could sense that feeling deepen into something almost antagonistic, something tense and unforgiving.
Our instructor was a man of few words, but the words that he did speak, he chose carefully and dictated them with an emphasis that clashed with the surroundings of our campus. It gave him a sort of awkward cadence, much like that of a Rankin-Bass villain explaining their next plan to inflict evil upon some unknowing entity. His conviction to his position and his love of the written word was obvious in that way that lends to easy criticism from those that seek out the easy targets of the world. After years of suffering through English classes taught by disinterested baseball coaches that the school needed on their payroll, I was enthralled by each word that spilled from his mouth. He instructed us to read the first entry from what was to become our main textbook, that year’s edition of The Best American Short Stories. It was story that followed an unnamed protagonist as they are led on a comprehensive job orientation at an office where something discomforting is clearly lurking under the well-managed and clean facade being presented to the new employee.
That first short story didn’t divide the class, but instead it united them in open arms against our instructor. During the next session, the air in the room was rank with bitter complaints that the story didn’t make sense, that it didn’t go anywhere, that it was pointless, that it was creepy, that it was unsettling and so on. He weathered all of these criticisms with a blank look on his face and then announced that I was the only one in class that hadn’t said a word or offered my opinion on the story. To this day, I don’t remember what I said in that panicked, on-the-spot moment as I told the class why I felt like “Orientation” was beyond brilliant and like a wake-up call to my senses, but I will forever remember the smile that crept over his face as he simply replied to me, “Yes, you nailed it.”
In 2024, Marie-Helene Bertino released a novel titled Beautyland that promised the story of a girl growing up with the belief that she exists as an alien sending communications back to her home planet reporting on humanity and all of its eccentricities. It’s a concept that many authors would have tackled and either revelled in the hilarity of potentials for misunderstanding or wallowed in the disbelief that we as humans so willingly cause each other pain in so many unique ways. Beautyland chose a different path and its central character experienced the wealth of human experience and emotion in ways that left me shouting “YES!” to an empty room as I read or cowering in the corner of my bedroom as I desperately kept reading while hoping for a resolution that took away the sinking feeling in my stomach as I worried for, adored and felt proud of her experiencing this thing we call life. As I handed a copy of Beautyland to a family member this past Christmas, I said, “You love coming of age stories? Well, get ready for the ultimate one.”
Short stories are a notoriously difficult place to work in as a writer. You aren’t given the space to spread your proverbial legs and take your time to get to the point somewhere in the 491st page of your almost never-ceasing tome. The impact needs to be felt almost immediately and has to grip the reader for several pages before it drops you off a cliff and walks away without a single thought or regret for where you land. As I crept into the first pages of Marie-Helene Bertino’s new collection of short stories, Exit Zero, I was assaulted by “Marry The Sea”, a story told in short vignettes that all appear disparate and disjointed until the moment you grasp the fabric that connects them. It’s creepy, it’s unsettling, it’s Lynchian and it’s astonishing. It’s the first story from my community college creative writing course all over again and it’s glorious in it’s execution and it’s impact.
Bertino has a gift for writing almost like she is actually an alien, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Where most writers would look at a scene and approach it head on, she sneaks up on the sides and finds a way to describe things inside of a story that would normally feel unapproachable while also highlighting the multitude of smaller stories hidden inside of the larger one at play. For decades, people have marvelled at how much Hemmingway was able to say by not saying anything in his infamous six word short story, but Bertino deserves credit for the sheer amount of life and world-building that she is able to cram into just a few short pages. Not only could I visualize all of these characters and their surroundings, but I was left with an intense feeling of loss when my time with them had ended.
From the story of the septuagenarian divorcee that steals a painting of a famous singer in her first act of unmarried defiance to the story of the young woman stuck in a never-ending Groundhog Day style loop of one specific twenty-seven minute episode of Cheers (featuring the most chilling moment I’ve read in a book in years thanks to Frasier Crane and his priest from season two of Fleabag awareness of the fourth wall) to the tale of a woman making her way to her friend’s coffee shop as her ex-partners rain down from the sky and crash to the ground around her, Bertino’s stories relish in a surreal playfulness that straddles the line between what feels possible and what feels like something from a dream that you can’t seem to wake up from.
But no matter the level of humor or the often unavoidable feelings of anxiousness that each of the stories featured in Exit Zero conveys, Bertino is supremely adept at finding the heart of each of her characters and exploring the unanswered questions and the tears at the mental and emotional seams that plague each of them. In fact, it was one simple line at the end of one story (”When did you cut your hair?”) that left me completely unmoored and found me taking more than a day to recover from the way it pushed me off balance. I dare anyone to read the title story from this collection, a tale of a woman cleaning the house of her recently deceased father, and not come away a different sort of person than were before.
The joy and ache that one feels from being allowed the company of Bertino’s words might only be able to be described aptly enough by the author herself: “Is life very fragile or very resilient?” Writing that has the ability to produce this sort of profound effect in its readers deserves to be celebrated and I am certain that I will be championing the words that Marie-Helene Bertino arranges and expresses so beautifully for the rest of my own time as someone that has always felt out of time and out of step with this plane of existence.
Thank you to both NetGalley and FSG Originals for the chance to read and review an advanced copy of this extraordinary work.
December 19, 2024
Bertino tackles heavy themes like grief, estrangement, divorce, and disconnection with the winning charm and dry wit that made her 2024 novel Beautyland such a standout. Her writing is both funny and emotionally resonant – brimming with life, verve, humor and heart.
The stories run the gamut of topics and it was amusing to see simple setups veer so wildly off course. In “Can Only Houses Be Haunted?,” a bickering couple finds that the peaches they bought from a roadside farm stand are haunted by a malign spirit. In “Exit Zero,” my favorite of the bunch, a daughter inherits a house from her estranged father – along with an unenthused, flatulent unicorn living in the backyard. Some stories, like “Edna in the Rain,” in which a woman’s ex-boyfriends literally rain from the sky, end abruptly or feel undercooked. But the majority are satisfying – both absurd and poignant in different ways.
★★★½
My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Bluesky
The stories run the gamut of topics and it was amusing to see simple setups veer so wildly off course. In “Can Only Houses Be Haunted?,” a bickering couple finds that the peaches they bought from a roadside farm stand are haunted by a malign spirit. In “Exit Zero,” my favorite of the bunch, a daughter inherits a house from her estranged father – along with an unenthused, flatulent unicorn living in the backyard. Some stories, like “Edna in the Rain,” in which a woman’s ex-boyfriends literally rain from the sky, end abruptly or feel undercooked. But the majority are satisfying – both absurd and poignant in different ways.
★★★½
My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Bluesky
April 13, 2025
I can’t say I really understood the point or plot of every story, but I did laugh and also feel uncomfortable which I’m pretty sure is the main purpose.
We have unicorns, art theft, Groundhog Day set in a sitcom….
This is the author of Beautyland, and if you are familiar with that, this is very similar just more fragmented and surreal. If you haven’t read her debut, please go do that.
Somehow, Bertino manages to inject nostalgia in all of her stories. Even though I am probably slightly too young to get the full impact, I still felt transported.
This is anxious, charming, weird, nonsensical.
The sudden start and stop of the stories with no handholding or explanations did put me off, however short stories are not my favourite most of the time in any case.
Audiobook arc gifted by Dreamscape Audio.
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Tiktok
We have unicorns, art theft, Groundhog Day set in a sitcom….
This is the author of Beautyland, and if you are familiar with that, this is very similar just more fragmented and surreal. If you haven’t read her debut, please go do that.
Somehow, Bertino manages to inject nostalgia in all of her stories. Even though I am probably slightly too young to get the full impact, I still felt transported.
This is anxious, charming, weird, nonsensical.
The sudden start and stop of the stories with no handholding or explanations did put me off, however short stories are not my favourite most of the time in any case.
Audiobook arc gifted by Dreamscape Audio.
Bookstagram
Tiktok
April 13, 2025
Major thanks to NetGalley and FSG for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest thoughts:
*3.5 rounded up
A woman trapped in a rerun. A tiger on the loose. Boohoo ghosts. Unicorns.
Bertino’s writing reminds me of Amelie. The way scenes chop up and progress into unexpected unravelings. Childlike wonder. Deep thrills in the simple and wondrous. Veering on magical realism, the stories surprise with every world. And though they aren’t fully fleshed out and perhaps need a bit more writing to become larger somethings, Bertino’s prose and imagination is what creates a boldness I haven’t found in other writers. It’s distinct, takes time getting used to, but if you’ve ever run around the city with a bunch of errands on three cold brews, seeing in seconds and forgetting shapes and colors altogether, everything meshing into Gershwin symphony, then you understand the wonder that she writes from. And sometimes that’s enough.
*3.5 rounded up
A woman trapped in a rerun. A tiger on the loose. Boohoo ghosts. Unicorns.
Bertino’s writing reminds me of Amelie. The way scenes chop up and progress into unexpected unravelings. Childlike wonder. Deep thrills in the simple and wondrous. Veering on magical realism, the stories surprise with every world. And though they aren’t fully fleshed out and perhaps need a bit more writing to become larger somethings, Bertino’s prose and imagination is what creates a boldness I haven’t found in other writers. It’s distinct, takes time getting used to, but if you’ve ever run around the city with a bunch of errands on three cold brews, seeing in seconds and forgetting shapes and colors altogether, everything meshing into Gershwin symphony, then you understand the wonder that she writes from. And sometimes that’s enough.
Read
August 4, 2025print copy ordered for this year’s Independent Bookstore haul, but listened first as an audiobook! &, so good!!
May 22, 2025
How curious—I thought Bertino’s charmingly unconventional tales would land perfectly as short stories. Beautyland was one of my favorites from 2024—her quirky, childlike voice and the sci-fi and speculative fiction genres merge wonderfully. In Exit Zero, the author carries those elements over: the playful writing creates a light-hearted mood as she subtly engages with ideas like loss, separation, and belonging for humans. You can count on peacocks and tigers making the cast list with the story Exit Zero, featuring unicorns, as my top pick (without a doubt) from this collection. Ultimately, the stories felt hurried and required more cooking time. This could be because it takes readers slightly longer to adjust to the author’s unique style and pantomime; by the time I catch the rhythm of the fantastical stories, it seems the next tune starts. The nostalgic quality of Bertino’s writing makes me look forward to what she’ll publish next.
My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an ARC.
My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an ARC.
May 5, 2025
Beautyland wasn't the best book I read last year but it was the one I was always talking about, the one I would suggest to people, the one I looked for reviews of and discussions about to see what other people thought of it. Exit Zero is a short story collection by the same author, Marie-Helene Bertino. It contains stories as weird and wonderful as Beautyland. I had the same reading experience with Exit Zero as I did with Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reaches series - never quite sure where I was or where I was going but I sure enjoyed the ride. These stories are fantastical and creepy and deeply human. Adenrele Ojo did an excellent job narrating these odd narratives, neither leaning too far into the campy elements nor going too far the other direction of detachment. Instead, the stories are read with a warmth which brings the humanity to the front, regardless of how bizarre the context. I hope there are more collaborations between the author and narrator in the future. For now, if Bertino writes it, I will read it! Thank you to the author, narrator, publisher, and NetGalley for the audioARC.
November 22, 2024
(a very weak 3.5/5⭐, rounded up)
Enjoyable, but not as strong as I hoped. It could just be a "me" thing, but some of these felt like too much had been crammed into too short of a story.
My favorites from this collection are:
Edna In The Rain (kinda reminded me of The Husband's by Holly Gramazio)
The Ecstacy of Sam Malone
Flowers & Their Meanings (flower "names" melted my heart and made me think of my late gma)
Viola In Midwinter
There are other short story collections I'd recommend before this one, like Out there by Kate Folk or Thanks For This Riot by Janelle Bassett.
{Thank you bunches to NetGalley, Marie-Helene Bertino and FSG for the DRC in exchange for my honest review!}
Enjoyable, but not as strong as I hoped. It could just be a "me" thing, but some of these felt like too much had been crammed into too short of a story.
My favorites from this collection are:
Edna In The Rain (kinda reminded me of The Husband's by Holly Gramazio)
The Ecstacy of Sam Malone
Flowers & Their Meanings (flower "names" melted my heart and made me think of my late gma)
Viola In Midwinter
There are other short story collections I'd recommend before this one, like Out there by Kate Folk or Thanks For This Riot by Janelle Bassett.
{Thank you bunches to NetGalley, Marie-Helene Bertino and FSG for the DRC in exchange for my honest review!}
August 4, 2025
Loved this book. All the stories were ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ to me. If I wrote stories, I would like to write like Marie-Helene Bertino. So beautiful, insightful and smart..
July 19: Marry the sea ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Just read it twice in one day and it is growing on me. Fragmented, Lyrical, Emotional, full of loose associations and powerful images and metaphors (-here’s an example of a fragment- ….The boy's penis had been injured in war and replaced with two orchids that needed different kinds of sunlight. The girl doesn't want a sexual relationship. [...] How can she tell him I want you to chew over my shoulder and ask what I'm reading? No one believes you when you're honest. So she says, "I don't want a sexual relationship," and leaves the rest unsaid and he senses a withholding and assumes she's lying and she feels misunderstood and eventually they get into separate cars and part…)
Edna in Rain ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 20: Exit Zero ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 21: Can only houses be haunted? ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 22: Lottie Woodside and the Diamond Dust Cher ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 25: The ecstasy of Sam Malone ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 26: The night gardener ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 27: Kathleen in bright colors ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Outstanding! This story is so good in its depiction of failed connection in a relationship. The ending seemed so sad to me. Sometimes two people, no matter how much they try, are just not for each other.
July 28: Every forest, every film ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 30: In the basement of Saint John the Divine ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This paragraph alone is a short story, isn’t it? Loved the poetic writing!
“It had been so long since they’d shared love’s telepathy, he saw her as if from the other side of a lake. They didn’t talk but signaled. Edward’s need for human contact became primal. He’d had sex a few times with a colleague. She’d let him come inside her. […] After a month, the thrill of her skin migrated to his stomach and turn to rot”
August 2: Flowers and their meaning ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
August 3: Viola in midwinter ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 19: Marry the sea ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Just read it twice in one day and it is growing on me. Fragmented, Lyrical, Emotional, full of loose associations and powerful images and metaphors (-here’s an example of a fragment- ….The boy's penis had been injured in war and replaced with two orchids that needed different kinds of sunlight. The girl doesn't want a sexual relationship. [...] How can she tell him I want you to chew over my shoulder and ask what I'm reading? No one believes you when you're honest. So she says, "I don't want a sexual relationship," and leaves the rest unsaid and he senses a withholding and assumes she's lying and she feels misunderstood and eventually they get into separate cars and part…)
Edna in Rain ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 20: Exit Zero ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 21: Can only houses be haunted? ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 22: Lottie Woodside and the Diamond Dust Cher ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 25: The ecstasy of Sam Malone ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 26: The night gardener ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 27: Kathleen in bright colors ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Outstanding! This story is so good in its depiction of failed connection in a relationship. The ending seemed so sad to me. Sometimes two people, no matter how much they try, are just not for each other.
July 28: Every forest, every film ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 30: In the basement of Saint John the Divine ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This paragraph alone is a short story, isn’t it? Loved the poetic writing!
“It had been so long since they’d shared love’s telepathy, he saw her as if from the other side of a lake. They didn’t talk but signaled. Edward’s need for human contact became primal. He’d had sex a few times with a colleague. She’d let him come inside her. […] After a month, the thrill of her skin migrated to his stomach and turn to rot”
August 2: Flowers and their meaning ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
August 3: Viola in midwinter ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
July 2, 2025
i found this to be so boring that i even left the last 30 mins of the audiobook for the next day, only to dread having to spend more time listening to it (i could have dnfed, but my toxic productivity could never allow me to for such a short book). if the stories weren't boring, the weirdness of some felt so forced that i couldn't enjoy much of it. out of all 13 stories, i liked 2 enough honestly. the audiobook narrator's voice triggered my escapism, and to me, it felt like it made the stories even more boring.
July 15, 2025
Twelve strange, exotic stories about everyday life. That sounds like an oxymoron, but not in Bertino's hands. She has a way of conflating the most ordinary of daily experiences with something bizarre, supernatural or just plain strange. She reminds me a little of Steven Millhauser.
Most of the stories are written in the present tense, which is an interesting choice. It gives an immediacy to the stories, as if you're seeing it 'as it happens'. It may add to the suspense in some of the stories, since the protagonist isn't retelling the story so they presumably don't know what will happen. Neither will you.
Mysterious balloons carrying cryptic messages, haunted peaches, a vampire, a narrator trapped in reruns of the TV show 'Cheers' (sounding a little like 'Groundhog Day') – these are some of the strange things that you'll see in a Bertino story. She can be very funny, too.
Most of the stories are written in the present tense, which is an interesting choice. It gives an immediacy to the stories, as if you're seeing it 'as it happens'. It may add to the suspense in some of the stories, since the protagonist isn't retelling the story so they presumably don't know what will happen. Neither will you.
Mysterious balloons carrying cryptic messages, haunted peaches, a vampire, a narrator trapped in reruns of the TV show 'Cheers' (sounding a little like 'Groundhog Day') – these are some of the strange things that you'll see in a Bertino story. She can be very funny, too.
April 11, 2025
I wanted to like this one so bad... I loved Beautyland but this collection is just not for me.
Beautyland was an unexpected hit for me. Her childlike, whimsical speculative fiction/sci-fi tale had me hooked and I was so excited to see that she was coming out with a short story collection. I thought her previous work was such a great debut and I was excited to see her grow in her sophomore novel. I honestly didn't see much growth here. It felt more like a regression.
I didn't think any of the stories were very strong. There's so much packed into such a short story that it comes off as too fantastical and confusing at times--not to mention that they all end so abruptly that it leaves you scratching your head. None of premises were bad it just felt rushed and I think they needed some more time and editing in order to bring out their true potential.
As a side note I did listen to the audiobook and I would not recommend that format. The narrator adds very little life into the stories and is very monotone--like reading from the phone book monotone. It detracted from the experience so I might try this collection again with the physical book and see if I feel any differently.
*Thank you to Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for providing me an arc copy of this book. All opinions expressed are entirely my own*
Beautyland was an unexpected hit for me. Her childlike, whimsical speculative fiction/sci-fi tale had me hooked and I was so excited to see that she was coming out with a short story collection. I thought her previous work was such a great debut and I was excited to see her grow in her sophomore novel. I honestly didn't see much growth here. It felt more like a regression.
I didn't think any of the stories were very strong. There's so much packed into such a short story that it comes off as too fantastical and confusing at times--not to mention that they all end so abruptly that it leaves you scratching your head. None of premises were bad it just felt rushed and I think they needed some more time and editing in order to bring out their true potential.
As a side note I did listen to the audiobook and I would not recommend that format. The narrator adds very little life into the stories and is very monotone--like reading from the phone book monotone. It detracted from the experience so I might try this collection again with the physical book and see if I feel any differently.
*Thank you to Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for providing me an arc copy of this book. All opinions expressed are entirely my own*
June 11, 2025
Do you ever wonder what it would be like to get stuck in a time loop of one of your favorite childhood tv shows? Wonder no more, the answer is here in one of the 12 short stories by the talented Marie-Helene Bertino.
After reading Beautyland earlier this year, I knew I appreciated the subtle way that her writing encompasses you. She has a distinct way of dropping wisdom and knowledge bombs in discreet places. They lie in wait like traps, and when you find them, you stop for a second, and it just makes you go "huh". Not "huh" as a question, but "huh" as a satisfactory exclamation that you just got what she was trying to make you get.
Exit Zero is a continuation of her subtle and sometimes quirky writing style. Honestly, the first story I didn't even understand until I finished it, but then I had one of those "huh" moments and was like, "yes, now I see". I listened to the audiobook, and really should have written down the names of each story so that I could reference them here, but honestly didn't think of it at the time. Note to self for future short story audiobooks.
There were many stories I enjoyed - "Exit Zero" is the titular story and is about a woman and a unicorn. There was a vampire story, a ghost girl and her peaches story. One about a boy that was born blind and then had an operation so he could see. Another about a woman, her sister, her garden and lots of balloons. These were some of the more memorable ones for me.
My favorite story by far, mostly due to the nostalgia factor, is the one that I mentioned in the opening of this review - a woman gets trapped in a time loop inside episodes of the 80s tv show "Cheers", which is set in a bar in Boston. I'll date myself a bit here by saying this was one of my favorite shows as a kid. (Yes, my parents passively permitted me to watch this, even though they complained at me that I watched it. They are faithful hypocritical and bigoted Christians who have never drank, smoked or done drugs. They offered no real structure, discipline or boundaries for me as a child, so here we are. Alas, I do not have a good relationship with them.) I found myself filled with happy nostalgia as the narrator rattled off the quirks and oddities of each beloved character. I found myself smiling ear to ear through this one and truly appreciated the interesting concept and execution of this story.
This set of stories further solidified my enjoyment of Bertino's writing style - she is subtle, yet witty and entertaining. I highly recommend this book to y'all out there that enjoy quiet stories that can pack a punch.
(Updated with full review on 6/11/25)
After reading Beautyland earlier this year, I knew I appreciated the subtle way that her writing encompasses you. She has a distinct way of dropping wisdom and knowledge bombs in discreet places. They lie in wait like traps, and when you find them, you stop for a second, and it just makes you go "huh". Not "huh" as a question, but "huh" as a satisfactory exclamation that you just got what she was trying to make you get.
Exit Zero is a continuation of her subtle and sometimes quirky writing style. Honestly, the first story I didn't even understand until I finished it, but then I had one of those "huh" moments and was like, "yes, now I see". I listened to the audiobook, and really should have written down the names of each story so that I could reference them here, but honestly didn't think of it at the time. Note to self for future short story audiobooks.
There were many stories I enjoyed - "Exit Zero" is the titular story and is about a woman and a unicorn. There was a vampire story, a ghost girl and her peaches story. One about a boy that was born blind and then had an operation so he could see. Another about a woman, her sister, her garden and lots of balloons. These were some of the more memorable ones for me.
My favorite story by far, mostly due to the nostalgia factor, is the one that I mentioned in the opening of this review - a woman gets trapped in a time loop inside episodes of the 80s tv show "Cheers", which is set in a bar in Boston. I'll date myself a bit here by saying this was one of my favorite shows as a kid. (Yes, my parents passively permitted me to watch this, even though they complained at me that I watched it. They are faithful hypocritical and bigoted Christians who have never drank, smoked or done drugs. They offered no real structure, discipline or boundaries for me as a child, so here we are. Alas, I do not have a good relationship with them.) I found myself filled with happy nostalgia as the narrator rattled off the quirks and oddities of each beloved character. I found myself smiling ear to ear through this one and truly appreciated the interesting concept and execution of this story.
This set of stories further solidified my enjoyment of Bertino's writing style - she is subtle, yet witty and entertaining. I highly recommend this book to y'all out there that enjoy quiet stories that can pack a punch.
(Updated with full review on 6/11/25)
May 12, 2025
I have received this short story collection for free as eARC and I write this review voluntarily.
Exit Zero is a fun collection of weird stories. I liked the most but real gems were the last stories. There is no way to figure out endings of any of the stories and some even do not have an ending. Some feel like weird girl fiction and some are like Julian Barnes style. There is no way to fully describe this ingenious collection, but it worths the time and effort for readers of weird fiction and also cosy stories. If you are up to read something extraordinary, Exit Zero is a good selection.
Thanks a lot to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux and the author Marie-Helene Bertino for this chance to read this dreamy story collection.
Exit Zero is a fun collection of weird stories. I liked the most but real gems were the last stories. There is no way to figure out endings of any of the stories and some even do not have an ending. Some feel like weird girl fiction and some are like Julian Barnes style. There is no way to fully describe this ingenious collection, but it worths the time and effort for readers of weird fiction and also cosy stories. If you are up to read something extraordinary, Exit Zero is a good selection.
Thanks a lot to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux and the author Marie-Helene Bertino for this chance to read this dreamy story collection.
tbr-most-anticipated
June 3, 2025i only have 3 short story collections left on my bookshelf so this is very serious now. i need to read this even SOONER otherwise i might risk having NO short story collections on my shelf. what then?
June 26, 2025
Bertino is one of my all time favorite writers. I recommend 2am at the Cat’s Pajamas to pretty much everyone I meet. Sadly, this was my least favorite of her books. Her novels are packed with great moments of humanness, often also a bit of wackiness and always sentences you’ll write down to remember later. Most of the stories here felt lacking these very things, at least to me. I was often left wondering what I was meant to take away from the story, or was that the point? That there wasn’t a takeaway? The stories here feel a lot closer to her novel Parakeet than Beauty Land or Cat’s Pajamas, and it’s not all bad news, I think fans of her work will find enough to enjoy here to keep reading and momentarily tide them over for her next novel.
May 18, 2025
Was a little mixed on these stories, which are almost all about grief, divorce, and aging. In Marie-Helene Bertino's perfect novel Beautyland she makes life's mundanities seem magical, whereas this collection makes the magical mundane, often even bleak. I was intrigued by many of the unique concepts, and she can be such a genius writer, but the depressing tone put me in a bad mood and I didn't personally love that practically every story had an unsatisfying ending.
May 10, 2025
I loved Beautyland so much when it came out and I still think of it fondly — the tenderness and loneliness, the innate sense of yearning in being an oddity. All of these things are what I came into Exit Zero expecting, because above all, Marie-Helene Bertino's strangeness is undeniably endearing. But while Exit Zero mirrors Bertino's typical sci-fi / speculative fiction framing, it fails, for the most part, to exude the same wisdom in simplicity gleamed from Beautyland.
Most of the stories in this collection left me lost on its purpose (but that could also just be my own misunderstanding). I will say that it's like Bertino heard the advice of "come in late and get out early" when writing chapters and took it to the extreme with these short stories. Some of them had intriguing premises, which is to be expected from Bertino, but the execution of them shouldn't have been so restricted to flatness for the sake of brevity.
2.5 rounded up. Thank you to the publishers for the copy!
Most of the stories in this collection left me lost on its purpose (but that could also just be my own misunderstanding). I will say that it's like Bertino heard the advice of "come in late and get out early" when writing chapters and took it to the extreme with these short stories. Some of them had intriguing premises, which is to be expected from Bertino, but the execution of them shouldn't have been so restricted to flatness for the sake of brevity.
2.5 rounded up. Thank you to the publishers for the copy!
April 18, 2025
This is a fascinating collection of short stories ranging from the strange to the unpredictable. Bertino does a fine job at tackling heavy subjects (divorce, estrangement, not knowing what to do in life) with magical-realism elements (unicorns, vampires, ghosts). Not something that’s typically for me, but I enjoyed the variation. My favorite stories are ‘Lottie Woodside and the Diamond Dust Cher’ and ‘The Night Gardener.’
Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for the ARC.
Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for the ARC.
August 13, 2025
The pace of these short stories was a little off for me. I would have loved for them to be a little longer. I really enjoy Bertino’s writing, but it just takes me a lot of effort to get into a story so I felt a little taxed .
A lot of the stories had a small element of supernatural to them, but were heavily grounded as well. I really enjoyed that!
A lot of the stories had a small element of supernatural to them, but were heavily grounded as well. I really enjoyed that!
dnf
July 31, 2025I loved Beautyland last year but this short story collection was WAY more surreal and disjointed than I was ready for. Might try a different collection of hers
August 1, 2025
LOVE Marie-Helene Bertino. Favorites in this collection are The Ecstasy of Sam Malone, Exit Zero, The Night Gardener, Viola in Midwinter, and Every Forest, Every Film but they're all pretty great.
August 11, 2025
2.75 stars. There were some nice moments, but I feel like I skimmed the whole thing. Writing a sticky, compelling short story is really hard. Maybe it’s time to reread The Tenth of December.
April 14, 2025
Many thanks to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of Marie-Helene Bertino’s excellent new collection of short stories Exit Zero. I was so excited to see this title since, as anyone who lives in the Philadelphia area knows from visits down the shore, Exit Zero is Cape May, or it could also be a pathway to Rio Grande, where the main characters from the titular story goes to sort out her recently deceased father’s affairs and makes a startling and magical discovery about his life, from which she was largely absent. This story, like many of the others, features characters who experience both loss and an extraordinary event, often one following the other. In some ways, these stories have a similar feel to Bertino’s amazing book Beautyland, which was another reason I was so excited to read these stories. I haven’t read anything else by Bertino, but I have been meaning to. Beautyland was rightly heralded as one of the best books of 2024, and I absolutely loved the book. Not only is it a great book that takes place for part of the time in Philly (and Wildwood, which is the exit before Exit Zero), but it also speaks to those who always feel a sense of difference, and how they make meaning in a world that doesn’t always accept them. It’s also an incredible story about friendships, relationships, and loss. With the first few stories in this collection, I initially felt like the tone was a little darker and there was more of an emphasis on loss and splits, as death, estrangement, and divorce all feature into these stories. Yet, when I think back about Beautyland, there were similar themes and events that Adina dealt with in her experiences observing and reporting on human behavior. I think she just tried to experience it from such an objective perspective that it created this incredible view that enabled me to reflect and think about my own interactions and expectations for relationships.
While the characters in Exit Zero are not aliens, one character, Viola, from “Viola in Midwinter”, transcends her humanity, yet experiences the kind of sadness and loneliness that she probably didn’t anticipate when she befriended Samara at the factory. This story is the last one in the collection and puts a creative spin on a more common type of horror story, one that considers the implications of loneliness and the kind of solitary existence that might come with living forever. It’s a really cool and unique take, and despite being filled with a kind of sorrow and longing for connection, I really enjoyed it, and it also reminded me of those themes from Beautyland—the desire to connect, observing others from a distance, and being equally intrigued and repulsed by their behavior.
The first two stories, “Marry the Sea” and “Edna in Rain”, seemed a little more like experiments than stories. They are both brief and surreal. “Marry the Sea” had some delightful images and word play, and it will be a story I need to revisit to further understand and make meaning from. “Edna in Rain” was another brief story about a woman who envisions her ex-boyfriends raining down outside. It has one of my favorite lines from the book too, “Sometimes I feel like God’s favorite sitcom.” There are other great lines and descriptions throughout the book that just made me stop and highlight it, and think more about its meaning and how I never heard something like this before. At first, the story reminded me of one from Ling Ma’s collection Bliss Montage, where she lives with all of her ex-boyfriends in a house or something, but Bertino’s story has fewer interactions with the exes. It seems like they go back further and further in her consciousness to include boys with whom she interacted, until it gets to her second grade boyfriend. It’s a surprising ending that I won’t ruin here, but the story ends with a sadness that comes from young revelations. It’s a stunning story for being so short and kind of magical in the beginning.
“Exit Zero” is the third story, and I can see why it bears the book’s title as well. It’s a great story about Jo, an event planner living in Brooklyn, whose estranged father passes away. She must go to Rio Grande, amazingly described as a one-strip-mall town” known for its fish tacos. I spent many summers in Cape May at my grandmom’s house, and I can remember taking trips over to Rio Grande, to go to the K-Mart or see a moving that was playing on Beach Drive’s theater. It always seemed like a reprieve from the shore to a kind of non-vacation world. Nevertheless, Jo’s experience in Rio Grande, sorting through the remains of her father’s life takes an unexpected turn when she discovers a unicorn in the backyard that her father had been caring for. This story is wonderful and heartbreaking as Jo tries to care for and understand the unicorn, and these steps she makes to care for this magical living creature also, in some ways, bring her closer to understanding her father. If you’ve ever experienced loss, only to question how things ended and what could have changed things, this story may appeal to you. Also, if you’ve ever been to Cape May, Wildwood, or Rio Grande, it should appeal to you as well, as well as several other stories—“Flowers and Their Meanings” and I think “Lottie Woodside and the Diamond Dust Cher” mentions Higbee Beach. I’m definitely going to recommend this book to all my family that spends the summer in Cape May.
“Can Only Houses Be Haunted?” is another interesting story that details the moment the narrator viewed her marriage as breaking. It’s also a kind of humorous ghost story that I would love to see turned into a short film or maybe a chapter in some kind of anthology movie. The child ghost in the story is pretty creepy, but the way that they expel the ghost is pretty funny. “Lottie Woodside and the Diamond Dust Cher” also details the end of a marriage, so this was when I started to notice the theme of loss, especially a kind of loss in relationships. This story follows a woman who, on the day of finalizing her divorce, decides to splurge on a cab ride, but ends up in a cab with another woman, and they both are involved in an accident. As a result, Lottie ends up with the woman’s package, which ends up being a fancy portrait of Cher. She tries to deliver the portrait to an art gallery, but never ends up getting to see the curator. I loved the scenes in the gallery. It reminded me of Otessa Moshfegh’s skewering of art in My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Even more absurd is how Lottie ends up wandering around NY with this large portrait of Cher when all she wants to do is go home and rearrange her apartment to start her life anew. I wasn’t sure if this was some kind of reference to turning back time, since it seems that Lottie ends up reflecting on how her marriage slowly disintegrated, and how her indifference may have contributed to it. Although both of these stories deal with divorce, I found them to also be absurd and funny, to a certain extent. If anything, the characters have unreal events that help them understand more about their situations and maybe allow them to gain new perspectives on their loss and how to move ahead.
“The Ecstasy of Sam Malone” is another surreal and absurd story where the main character ends up trapped in an episode of Cheers. She seems to want to escape her real life, abandoning her studies to drink at bars, only to wake up one night and exit to the bar where everyone knows your name. I loved how this story veers between recalling plotlines of episodes and the recurring gags and jokes, and how the narrator really tries to escape through Melville’s. Interestingly, a stranger enters the bar, explaining that he wants to have a drink while he waits for his wife’s surgery. No one at the bar believes him; they all think he’s been sent by the rival bar to get revenge for beating them in a sports contest. I wondered if this was also a kind of message about loss and grief, and how even where everyone knows your name, they might not really believe these kinds of challenging feelings and emotions. Rather than confront them, they want to keep up the jokes and the façade of life that allows us to keep laughing. I would love to include these stories in a book club discussion to see what others think. The magic and absurdity of these stories adds to the depth and ambiguity in their message and meaning.
I also really loved “The Night Gardener” about a woman who gardens at night, but begins to receive messages from balloons. She begins to communicate with them, and they respond. Claudia, the night gardener, has an admirer from work, but she doesn’t really reciprocate his feelings. He brings over flowers, and she ends up texting her sister asking about the flowers. While Claudia has someone who is interested in her and wants to talk to her, she spends more time with the balloons and texting her sister. The story culminates with Claudia preparing her garden for a gardening contest in the city. I loved the mysterious communication and some of the insights we gain about Claudia and why she keeps texting her sister. It’s another great story about loss and the things we hold on to. “Kathleen in Light Colors” is a story about a couple that discover there is something between them that ultimately keeps them apart. It is never named, but it also ends up bringing them to other people. It’s a shorter story, but again, it is one of the more profound reflections on loss and relationships ending. “Every Forest, Every Film” is about a film critic who ends up filling in for another critic (who just so happens to be named Jude Law, like the actor) at a new hot show that she is supposed to have heard or read about, but didn’t really know. It’s called The Cab and is kind of like an interactive, immersive cab ride that ultimately disorients the critic, but also that amazes her. The critic is recently divorced, and her father ends up sending her a package that he seems nervous about its arrival. His explanation at the end of the story makes more sense, and I think it also speaks to the challenges of how loved ones navigate divorces of those they care about. Although he has good intentions, it also seemed kind of an odd choice to send. The other element of this story I loved was the aura and setting of The Cab. Bertino describes the workers in a hilarious way. This is another story I will need to revisit, and one that I would love to hear discussed in a book club. I’m still trying to make sense of the different parts that come together in this story, but I think that is what makes this story so great.
“In the Basement of Saint John the Divine” was both sad and strange, and I loved the ending of this story. The story focuses on James, a younger boy who only recently had his sight restored. His dad decides to have him spend the night at a kind of medieval sleepover, where the participants act as knights. His mom is returning to stand up comedy, but is nervous about allowing her recently sighted son to spend the night out. Even though this story is more about gaining than loss, James still loses something as he gains sight, and the story also focuses on what role parents play in the growth and development of their children, and James’ parents feel like maybe with his sight restored, they are no longer necessary to help shape his world. It’s a powerful story about taking steps where you may not feel comfortable and being willing to take those kinds of risks to discover what you are really capable of. “Flowers and Their Meanings” is also about parent-child relationships, and specifically focuses on a narrator who as a late teen ends up taking care of her mother while she recovers from surgery. During this summer, the narrator works at a local clothing shop, and I imagined that this story also took place in Rio Grande from her description. There is also a tiger on the lose from the “tiny shore-town zoo”, so I immediately thought of the Cape May Zoo, which is actually a great zoo. We see the narrator care for others as well—whether it is a customer stuck in a dress or deciding not to further confront the family of a man who harassed her while they are having a meal. It’s an interesting story where we see how she remains responsible and caring, despite or maybe in spite of all the bad events taking place in other families.
I couldn’t put this book down, reading several stories at a time. As I mentioned, I can’t wait to tell my cousins and relatives who regularly spend their summers in Cape May about Exit Zero and Beautyland. I’ve been meaning to tell my sister about Beautyland because it’s such a beautiful story, and these stories in Exit Zero also serve as a great entry point to further enjoy Beautyland. I loved how they traverse some familiar terrain, but ask us to look at emotions and tragic events like death, divorce, loss from a different perspective, often trying to find the humor, magic, or surrealness in them. This is how we can manage to get through these situations and find meaning. I highly recommend this collection, and need to make sure I pick up Bertino’s other collections and books.
While the characters in Exit Zero are not aliens, one character, Viola, from “Viola in Midwinter”, transcends her humanity, yet experiences the kind of sadness and loneliness that she probably didn’t anticipate when she befriended Samara at the factory. This story is the last one in the collection and puts a creative spin on a more common type of horror story, one that considers the implications of loneliness and the kind of solitary existence that might come with living forever. It’s a really cool and unique take, and despite being filled with a kind of sorrow and longing for connection, I really enjoyed it, and it also reminded me of those themes from Beautyland—the desire to connect, observing others from a distance, and being equally intrigued and repulsed by their behavior.
The first two stories, “Marry the Sea” and “Edna in Rain”, seemed a little more like experiments than stories. They are both brief and surreal. “Marry the Sea” had some delightful images and word play, and it will be a story I need to revisit to further understand and make meaning from. “Edna in Rain” was another brief story about a woman who envisions her ex-boyfriends raining down outside. It has one of my favorite lines from the book too, “Sometimes I feel like God’s favorite sitcom.” There are other great lines and descriptions throughout the book that just made me stop and highlight it, and think more about its meaning and how I never heard something like this before. At first, the story reminded me of one from Ling Ma’s collection Bliss Montage, where she lives with all of her ex-boyfriends in a house or something, but Bertino’s story has fewer interactions with the exes. It seems like they go back further and further in her consciousness to include boys with whom she interacted, until it gets to her second grade boyfriend. It’s a surprising ending that I won’t ruin here, but the story ends with a sadness that comes from young revelations. It’s a stunning story for being so short and kind of magical in the beginning.
“Exit Zero” is the third story, and I can see why it bears the book’s title as well. It’s a great story about Jo, an event planner living in Brooklyn, whose estranged father passes away. She must go to Rio Grande, amazingly described as a one-strip-mall town” known for its fish tacos. I spent many summers in Cape May at my grandmom’s house, and I can remember taking trips over to Rio Grande, to go to the K-Mart or see a moving that was playing on Beach Drive’s theater. It always seemed like a reprieve from the shore to a kind of non-vacation world. Nevertheless, Jo’s experience in Rio Grande, sorting through the remains of her father’s life takes an unexpected turn when she discovers a unicorn in the backyard that her father had been caring for. This story is wonderful and heartbreaking as Jo tries to care for and understand the unicorn, and these steps she makes to care for this magical living creature also, in some ways, bring her closer to understanding her father. If you’ve ever experienced loss, only to question how things ended and what could have changed things, this story may appeal to you. Also, if you’ve ever been to Cape May, Wildwood, or Rio Grande, it should appeal to you as well, as well as several other stories—“Flowers and Their Meanings” and I think “Lottie Woodside and the Diamond Dust Cher” mentions Higbee Beach. I’m definitely going to recommend this book to all my family that spends the summer in Cape May.
“Can Only Houses Be Haunted?” is another interesting story that details the moment the narrator viewed her marriage as breaking. It’s also a kind of humorous ghost story that I would love to see turned into a short film or maybe a chapter in some kind of anthology movie. The child ghost in the story is pretty creepy, but the way that they expel the ghost is pretty funny. “Lottie Woodside and the Diamond Dust Cher” also details the end of a marriage, so this was when I started to notice the theme of loss, especially a kind of loss in relationships. This story follows a woman who, on the day of finalizing her divorce, decides to splurge on a cab ride, but ends up in a cab with another woman, and they both are involved in an accident. As a result, Lottie ends up with the woman’s package, which ends up being a fancy portrait of Cher. She tries to deliver the portrait to an art gallery, but never ends up getting to see the curator. I loved the scenes in the gallery. It reminded me of Otessa Moshfegh’s skewering of art in My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Even more absurd is how Lottie ends up wandering around NY with this large portrait of Cher when all she wants to do is go home and rearrange her apartment to start her life anew. I wasn’t sure if this was some kind of reference to turning back time, since it seems that Lottie ends up reflecting on how her marriage slowly disintegrated, and how her indifference may have contributed to it. Although both of these stories deal with divorce, I found them to also be absurd and funny, to a certain extent. If anything, the characters have unreal events that help them understand more about their situations and maybe allow them to gain new perspectives on their loss and how to move ahead.
“The Ecstasy of Sam Malone” is another surreal and absurd story where the main character ends up trapped in an episode of Cheers. She seems to want to escape her real life, abandoning her studies to drink at bars, only to wake up one night and exit to the bar where everyone knows your name. I loved how this story veers between recalling plotlines of episodes and the recurring gags and jokes, and how the narrator really tries to escape through Melville’s. Interestingly, a stranger enters the bar, explaining that he wants to have a drink while he waits for his wife’s surgery. No one at the bar believes him; they all think he’s been sent by the rival bar to get revenge for beating them in a sports contest. I wondered if this was also a kind of message about loss and grief, and how even where everyone knows your name, they might not really believe these kinds of challenging feelings and emotions. Rather than confront them, they want to keep up the jokes and the façade of life that allows us to keep laughing. I would love to include these stories in a book club discussion to see what others think. The magic and absurdity of these stories adds to the depth and ambiguity in their message and meaning.
I also really loved “The Night Gardener” about a woman who gardens at night, but begins to receive messages from balloons. She begins to communicate with them, and they respond. Claudia, the night gardener, has an admirer from work, but she doesn’t really reciprocate his feelings. He brings over flowers, and she ends up texting her sister asking about the flowers. While Claudia has someone who is interested in her and wants to talk to her, she spends more time with the balloons and texting her sister. The story culminates with Claudia preparing her garden for a gardening contest in the city. I loved the mysterious communication and some of the insights we gain about Claudia and why she keeps texting her sister. It’s another great story about loss and the things we hold on to. “Kathleen in Light Colors” is a story about a couple that discover there is something between them that ultimately keeps them apart. It is never named, but it also ends up bringing them to other people. It’s a shorter story, but again, it is one of the more profound reflections on loss and relationships ending. “Every Forest, Every Film” is about a film critic who ends up filling in for another critic (who just so happens to be named Jude Law, like the actor) at a new hot show that she is supposed to have heard or read about, but didn’t really know. It’s called The Cab and is kind of like an interactive, immersive cab ride that ultimately disorients the critic, but also that amazes her. The critic is recently divorced, and her father ends up sending her a package that he seems nervous about its arrival. His explanation at the end of the story makes more sense, and I think it also speaks to the challenges of how loved ones navigate divorces of those they care about. Although he has good intentions, it also seemed kind of an odd choice to send. The other element of this story I loved was the aura and setting of The Cab. Bertino describes the workers in a hilarious way. This is another story I will need to revisit, and one that I would love to hear discussed in a book club. I’m still trying to make sense of the different parts that come together in this story, but I think that is what makes this story so great.
“In the Basement of Saint John the Divine” was both sad and strange, and I loved the ending of this story. The story focuses on James, a younger boy who only recently had his sight restored. His dad decides to have him spend the night at a kind of medieval sleepover, where the participants act as knights. His mom is returning to stand up comedy, but is nervous about allowing her recently sighted son to spend the night out. Even though this story is more about gaining than loss, James still loses something as he gains sight, and the story also focuses on what role parents play in the growth and development of their children, and James’ parents feel like maybe with his sight restored, they are no longer necessary to help shape his world. It’s a powerful story about taking steps where you may not feel comfortable and being willing to take those kinds of risks to discover what you are really capable of. “Flowers and Their Meanings” is also about parent-child relationships, and specifically focuses on a narrator who as a late teen ends up taking care of her mother while she recovers from surgery. During this summer, the narrator works at a local clothing shop, and I imagined that this story also took place in Rio Grande from her description. There is also a tiger on the lose from the “tiny shore-town zoo”, so I immediately thought of the Cape May Zoo, which is actually a great zoo. We see the narrator care for others as well—whether it is a customer stuck in a dress or deciding not to further confront the family of a man who harassed her while they are having a meal. It’s an interesting story where we see how she remains responsible and caring, despite or maybe in spite of all the bad events taking place in other families.
I couldn’t put this book down, reading several stories at a time. As I mentioned, I can’t wait to tell my cousins and relatives who regularly spend their summers in Cape May about Exit Zero and Beautyland. I’ve been meaning to tell my sister about Beautyland because it’s such a beautiful story, and these stories in Exit Zero also serve as a great entry point to further enjoy Beautyland. I loved how they traverse some familiar terrain, but ask us to look at emotions and tragic events like death, divorce, loss from a different perspective, often trying to find the humor, magic, or surrealness in them. This is how we can manage to get through these situations and find meaning. I highly recommend this collection, and need to make sure I pick up Bertino’s other collections and books.
May 11, 2025
“No one notices remarkable women.”
June 20, 2025
2.5 stars. I just don’t think this was for me.
A collection of short stories that is quirky and unique, but not particularly interesting . Most of the stories contain of some kind of eccentric metaphor that feels as though you’re being force fed a life lesson in lieu of an entertaining story.
A collection of short stories that is quirky and unique, but not particularly interesting . Most of the stories contain of some kind of eccentric metaphor that feels as though you’re being force fed a life lesson in lieu of an entertaining story.
August 17, 2025
I really like this creative, imaginative wild woman and her storytelling through loss, grief, sadness, isolation, complex parent - child relationships and ex husbands, strange jobs, mysterious time loops in Cheers bar, unicorns as truly difficult, all the gardens, plants, wild creatures, balloon messages from sisters, aliens, or the past as prototype for Beautyland..
Keep working, writing sharing and mystifying/demystifying through your art!
Keep working, writing sharing and mystifying/demystifying through your art!
March 11, 2025
Enjoyed the stories, some a lot more than others but overall, it was pretty good
July 17, 2025
- Marry the Sea: the line "Mother, why is it impossible to hold the feeling of happiness inside me?" really struck me and left me speechless for a couple of minutes. It starts off as some vinettes and they don't seem to have a connection, but slowly you start seeing the connecting thread between everything.
- Edna in Rain: A woman is stuck in a rain of her ex-boyfriends, along with one-night stands and crushes, and she remembers these past relationships as each one of them falls to the ground like raindrops. But I'm intrigued by what that last man's appearance means.
- Exit Zero: A woman deals with the death of an estranged father as she goes to his house to empty it out after his demise. There she encounters a unicorn. I love the relationship that issues, though you could replace a unicorn with a cat, and it would somehow stay the same? but I loved the unicorn of course!
- Can Only Houses be Haunted: A couple is haunted by a girl's ghost who haunts a peach, and it brings up all of their unresolved problems.
- Lottie Woodside and the Diamond Dust Cher: A woman who just signed her divorce papers finds herself in a strange accident and she's left with a painting and a new outlook on her life
I read the rest of the stories below in one sitting and it was a blur, but I did like them.
- The Ecstasy of Sam Malone:
- The Night Gardener:
- Kathleen in Light Colors:
- Every Forest, Every Film:
- In the Basement of Saint John the Divine:
- Flowers and their Meanings:
- Viola in Midwinter:
- Edna in Rain: A woman is stuck in a rain of her ex-boyfriends, along with one-night stands and crushes, and she remembers these past relationships as each one of them falls to the ground like raindrops. But I'm intrigued by what that last man's appearance means.
- Exit Zero: A woman deals with the death of an estranged father as she goes to his house to empty it out after his demise. There she encounters a unicorn. I love the relationship that issues, though you could replace a unicorn with a cat, and it would somehow stay the same? but I loved the unicorn of course!
- Can Only Houses be Haunted: A couple is haunted by a girl's ghost who haunts a peach, and it brings up all of their unresolved problems.
- Lottie Woodside and the Diamond Dust Cher: A woman who just signed her divorce papers finds herself in a strange accident and she's left with a painting and a new outlook on her life
I read the rest of the stories below in one sitting and it was a blur, but I did like them.
- The Ecstasy of Sam Malone:
- The Night Gardener:
- Kathleen in Light Colors:
- Every Forest, Every Film:
- In the Basement of Saint John the Divine:
- Flowers and their Meanings:
- Viola in Midwinter:
Displaying 1 - 30 of 157 reviews