Zero Zone

Starred review from July 1, 2020

The art created by Jess Shepard has unexpected effects on some of its viewers; in one case, a man with some brain damage caused by a serious stroke finds his ability to dream restored after walking through a series of rooms she created, each lit with a single, bold color. Far from her L.A. studio, in another installation room built in the New Mexico desert with concrete blocks, cult leader Tanner seeks "to pass to the other side" to be in phase with another world. But this "Zero Zone" installation results in extreme violence and a police standoff, for which the tormented Jess feels responsible. A teenage girl named Isabella, who was involved in the incident, later seeks revenge by physically attacking Jess in an art gallery and vanishing. After promising Isabella's parents that she will find her, Jess is led back to the Zero Zone for the story's climax. VERDICT After finishing this cinematic novel, some readers will be compelled to start again at page one to discover how O'Connor (A Perfect Universe) pieces together his suspenseful, incredibly well-written narrative and to contemplate the artworks described.--Lisa Rohrbaugh, Leetonia Community P.L., OH

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2020
The aftermath of an uncanny art installation entangles the artist and her audience with unintended consequences. Jess Shepard creates art out of experiences. First, she created The Way Out, a room for young women to smash objects in anger, as a response to a college hazing ritual called the weigh-in. Then she assembled the Rainbow Rooms, a sequence of adjacent chambers flooded with singular hues of light so intense that lines of return visitors formed around the block. But these interactive exhibits pale in comparison to Jess' masterpiece, Zero Zone, a concrete cube constructed in the New Mexico desert at a site formerly used for nuclear bomb tests. Due to lingering radiation in the air, "you see things sometimes," as the owner of the land puts it. The novel revolves around a group of haphazard travelers who wind up inside Zero Zone together: Martha, a cocktail waitress at a Las Vegas casino; Tanner, a mailroom clerk with disfiguring neurofibromatosis; Danny, a "muscle-bound, baby-faced Latino kid" fresh out of county jail; and Izzy, a wayward teen nicknamed Se�orita Shake by mean-spirited kids at school after suffering a seizure. The four share an otherworldly experience in the room, and they decide to barricade themselves inside. When sheriff's deputies arrive, the standoff turns into a shootout, ending with one unfortunate fatality. Shortly thereafter, Izzy attacks Jess at a gallery show, leading to her incarceration. Upon Izzy's early release, her mother, Madeline, contacts Jess to solicit her help in locating her daughter, which reopens the wound. While each character's narrative should compel readers to invest in the backstory and tragedy of the lethal intersection between life and art, the novel never finds its footing, succeeding only in revealing a completed puzzle and asking readers to pick apart the pieces. A novel about experiential art based in light and space loses focus along the way.

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Starred review from August 17, 2020
O’Connor’s harrowing, dexterous thriller (after the collection A Perfect Universe) delves into the impact of an art installation on a group of emotionally disturbed characters. In 1977, Los Angeles installation artist Jess Shepard processes the defining moments of her childhood—a near drowning when she was 11 and the death of her parents in a car accident two years later—by building “Zero Zone,” a concrete building in the New Mexico desert, near a defunct nuclear testing site. Then a group of religious seekers converge and occupy the site, leading to a violent showdown with law enforcement. A month later, teenage Izzy, one of the seekers who was at the site, confronts Jess at a Los Angeles gallery opening and sprays her with a mysterious toxic gas. When Izzy is released two years later from juvenile detention, her life and Jess’s intersect again. O’Connor moves nimbly among points of view and shuffles back and forth in time, allowing the reader to piece the story together, only to zoom out and reveal thatJess’s relationship with the seekers is more complicated than it intially seemed. With a noir tone and a rich assortment of characters whose lives unfold in chapters pared down to their essentials, the novel transforms a would-be abstract meditation on the influence of art into a vital, deeply engaging work. Writing with verve and precision, O’Connor serves up a thoughtful, original thriller. Agent: Yishai Seidman, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner.

October 1, 2020
In this magnetic novel, O'Connor (A Perfect Universe, 2018) shows how art can affect both its creator and its audience in unexpected ways. Jess Shepard makes art on a grand scale: installations made from physical space, using large-format materials and lightscapes. Jess's seminal work, Zero Zone, was a bunker isolated in a New Mexico desert?until a group of nomads became obsessed with Jess's work and refused to leave. A police confrontation destroyed the work and left one man dead, but the tragedy didn't end there. Isabella Serrano, a young woman who was part of the group trapped in Zero Zone, confronted Jess at a gallery opening and attacked her with pressurized air, injuring her and destroying her creativity. Now, two years later, Isabella is getting out of jail?and Jess must examine her past as well as the history of her own art. O'Connor dovetails Jess's perspective with those of the Zero Zone survivors, excavating the truth like an archaeologist unearthing a skeleton. Recommended for fans of Ann Patchett's Bel Canto (2001).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)