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Zero Zone: A Novel
A literary thriller about an infamous desert art installation, the cult it inspired, and the search for a missing young woman that is “cinematic . . . readers will be compelled to start again at page one to discover how O’Connor pieces together his suspenseful, incredibly well–written narrative” ( Library Journal , starred review).
Los Angeles, the late 1970 Jess Shepard is an installation artist who creates environments that focus on light and space, often leading to intense sensory experiences for visitors to her work. A run of critically lauded projects peaks with Zero Zone, an installation at the once upon a time site of nuclear bomb testing in the New Mexico desert. But when a small group of travelers experience what they perceive as a religious awakening inside Zero Zone, they barricade themselves in the installation until authorities are forced to intervene. That violent showdown becomes a media sensation, and its aftermath follows Jess wherever she goes.
Devastated by the attack and the distortion of her art, Jess retreats from the world. Unable to work, Jess unravels mentally and emotionally, plagued by a nagging uncertainty as to her culpability for what happened.
Three years later, a survivor from Zero Zone comes looking for Jess, who must move past her self imposed isolation to face down her fears and recover her art and possibly her life from a violent cult intent of making it their own.
Los Angeles, the late 1970 Jess Shepard is an installation artist who creates environments that focus on light and space, often leading to intense sensory experiences for visitors to her work. A run of critically lauded projects peaks with Zero Zone, an installation at the once upon a time site of nuclear bomb testing in the New Mexico desert. But when a small group of travelers experience what they perceive as a religious awakening inside Zero Zone, they barricade themselves in the installation until authorities are forced to intervene. That violent showdown becomes a media sensation, and its aftermath follows Jess wherever she goes.
Devastated by the attack and the distortion of her art, Jess retreats from the world. Unable to work, Jess unravels mentally and emotionally, plagued by a nagging uncertainty as to her culpability for what happened.
Three years later, a survivor from Zero Zone comes looking for Jess, who must move past her self imposed isolation to face down her fears and recover her art and possibly her life from a violent cult intent of making it their own.
320 pages, Paperback
First published October 6, 2020
52 people are currently reading
2646 people want to read
About the author
Scott O'Connor
17 books95 followersScott O’Connor is the author of the novels 'Zero Zone', 'Untouchable', and 'Half World', and the story collection 'A Perfect Universe'.
He has been awarded the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, and his stories have been shortlisted for the Sunday Times/EFG Story Prize and cited as Distinguished in Best American Short Stories. Additional work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Zyzzyva, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.
He has been awarded the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, and his stories have been shortlisted for the Sunday Times/EFG Story Prize and cited as Distinguished in Best American Short Stories. Additional work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Zyzzyva, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 60 reviews
October 20, 2020
The beginning of this novel...reminded me of a situation I found myself in years ago: caught in an ocean-wave-undercurrent. It was an experience I’ve never forgotten.
In this story....
Jess Shepard was eleven years old - on a family trip in Los Angeles. (January-mid 50’s: much warmer than Boston was back home), when she was pulled down into the ocean undercurrent. A lifeguard pulled Jess out of the water... performed CPR ....and Jess recovered.
Jess’s early childhood near-death experience is tied into the rest of this novel.
I HAD TO GO BACK AND READ THE BEGINNING AGAIN....
Years later - 1970’s - Jess is in her 30’s - a big name success in the art world for her creation of her ‘Zero Zone’ project.
Jess became an installation artist...
CAN YOU NAME ONE PERSON YOU KNOW WHO IS INTO INSTALLATION ART?
me either: no.
But installation art ( itself), was a fascinating part of the emotional thriller.
The real-life tales of the characters makes this book very relatable.
Jess’s older brother, Zack, by two years, was the artist in their family....(their parents often introduced them as “Zack-the-artist”...and this is “Jess”, his younger sister.... (haha, the not-talented one)...
....but after the ocean incident, Jess began to turn to art, wanting to re-capture ‘the ocean-near-drowning’ experience’ and share her work with others.
The parents die in a car accident when Jess and Zack are still teenagers.
The children migrate from the east coast to Los Angeles permanently.
Their eccentric-California-70’s-hip Aunt ( their father’s semi-estranged sister), becomes the kids legal guardians.
Ms. free-spirit Auntie offers teenage Jess cigarettes - and art supplies - (an outlet for her loss and grief).
Zack quickly found ‘his’ outlet by becoming friends with an older professor. ( icky thoughts ran through my head)...
Point is....
the Aunt was supportive of the children and wise enough to know they needed encouragement to move forward. The reader knows the kids had to be painfully hurting... in ways words wouldn’t do justice over the loss of one’s parents at such impressionable ages.
Around this time....
Jess began to get serious about art. Grief, loss, and loneliness, were at the heart of her work.
Jess created a speculator art exploration that gave me the jitters just reading about it....
Her famous art installation was built on old military site in the New Mexico desert - that was once a site for nuclear bomb testing.
Jess’s eerie optical-illusion creation with shadows of light giving a boundless space dimensional feeling - became a visitor tourist attraction.
Although not the same...
I thought of “The Mystery Spot”, ( a type of gravity defying box), in Santa Cruz.
Observers can have an array of strange experiences.
With Jess’s art project,
a group of eyewitness beholders, had an array of unforeseen experiences too...
enhanced by a religious type cult leader, named Tanner.
Things got messier and messier. ....
Was anyone to blame? Yes, or no.... it’s real people who are affected.
The events that happen in this story -
and the characters they happen to....
are.....
GLOOMY and COMPELLING.
Even before ‘Zero Zone’, there was college - and there was Alex... ( ‘passionate’ on again, off again, boyfriend/artist/lover) with Jess.
During an off time - Alex married a pregnant Christine.
Alex dies early in the story....
creating an interesting storyline between Jess and Christine.
Another interesting storyline was with a young teenage girl, Izzy.
DON’T PISS IZZY OFF...
We meet numeral intriguing characters. All of them laced with tragedies.
THIS STORY GETS INSIDE YOUR HEAD AND WON’T LEAVE EASY.
I did more ‘back-tracking-re-reads’ than I normally do.
Paying extra close attention seemed necessary (and at times frustrating), to me.
The author does ties loose ends together eventually — but the transition from one characters point of view to the next felt a little jarring - for awhile — but ‘eventually’ it wasn’t jarring any longer ...
and I couldn’t pull away...
HAD TO KEEP READING...
Little side treats:
If you’re familiar with Los Angeles as I am - it’s fun to visit the old stopping spots - off Wilshire Boulevard, Hamburger Hamlet, Bullocks Dept. Store, Santa Monica, etc.
This was a unique book - glad I read it. I still can’t stop thinking about it. ( maybe a movie - or series spin off?)....
Connecting art and emotional repercussions are examined through the artist and the viewers.
One heck of a profound book.
Kudos to Scott O’Conner
In this story....
Jess Shepard was eleven years old - on a family trip in Los Angeles. (January-mid 50’s: much warmer than Boston was back home), when she was pulled down into the ocean undercurrent. A lifeguard pulled Jess out of the water... performed CPR ....and Jess recovered.
Jess’s early childhood near-death experience is tied into the rest of this novel.
I HAD TO GO BACK AND READ THE BEGINNING AGAIN....
Years later - 1970’s - Jess is in her 30’s - a big name success in the art world for her creation of her ‘Zero Zone’ project.
Jess became an installation artist...
CAN YOU NAME ONE PERSON YOU KNOW WHO IS INTO INSTALLATION ART?
me either: no.
But installation art ( itself), was a fascinating part of the emotional thriller.
The real-life tales of the characters makes this book very relatable.
Jess’s older brother, Zack, by two years, was the artist in their family....(their parents often introduced them as “Zack-the-artist”...and this is “Jess”, his younger sister.... (haha, the not-talented one)...
....but after the ocean incident, Jess began to turn to art, wanting to re-capture ‘the ocean-near-drowning’ experience’ and share her work with others.
The parents die in a car accident when Jess and Zack are still teenagers.
The children migrate from the east coast to Los Angeles permanently.
Their eccentric-California-70’s-hip Aunt ( their father’s semi-estranged sister), becomes the kids legal guardians.
Ms. free-spirit Auntie offers teenage Jess cigarettes - and art supplies - (an outlet for her loss and grief).
Zack quickly found ‘his’ outlet by becoming friends with an older professor. ( icky thoughts ran through my head)...
Point is....
the Aunt was supportive of the children and wise enough to know they needed encouragement to move forward. The reader knows the kids had to be painfully hurting... in ways words wouldn’t do justice over the loss of one’s parents at such impressionable ages.
Around this time....
Jess began to get serious about art. Grief, loss, and loneliness, were at the heart of her work.
Jess created a speculator art exploration that gave me the jitters just reading about it....
Her famous art installation was built on old military site in the New Mexico desert - that was once a site for nuclear bomb testing.
Jess’s eerie optical-illusion creation with shadows of light giving a boundless space dimensional feeling - became a visitor tourist attraction.
Although not the same...
I thought of “The Mystery Spot”, ( a type of gravity defying box), in Santa Cruz.
Observers can have an array of strange experiences.
With Jess’s art project,
a group of eyewitness beholders, had an array of unforeseen experiences too...
enhanced by a religious type cult leader, named Tanner.
Things got messier and messier. ....
Was anyone to blame? Yes, or no.... it’s real people who are affected.
The events that happen in this story -
and the characters they happen to....
are.....
GLOOMY and COMPELLING.
Even before ‘Zero Zone’, there was college - and there was Alex... ( ‘passionate’ on again, off again, boyfriend/artist/lover) with Jess.
During an off time - Alex married a pregnant Christine.
Alex dies early in the story....
creating an interesting storyline between Jess and Christine.
Another interesting storyline was with a young teenage girl, Izzy.
DON’T PISS IZZY OFF...
We meet numeral intriguing characters. All of them laced with tragedies.
THIS STORY GETS INSIDE YOUR HEAD AND WON’T LEAVE EASY.
I did more ‘back-tracking-re-reads’ than I normally do.
Paying extra close attention seemed necessary (and at times frustrating), to me.
The author does ties loose ends together eventually — but the transition from one characters point of view to the next felt a little jarring - for awhile — but ‘eventually’ it wasn’t jarring any longer ...
and I couldn’t pull away...
HAD TO KEEP READING...
Little side treats:
If you’re familiar with Los Angeles as I am - it’s fun to visit the old stopping spots - off Wilshire Boulevard, Hamburger Hamlet, Bullocks Dept. Store, Santa Monica, etc.
This was a unique book - glad I read it. I still can’t stop thinking about it. ( maybe a movie - or series spin off?)....
Connecting art and emotional repercussions are examined through the artist and the viewers.
One heck of a profound book.
Kudos to Scott O’Conner
September 27, 2020
This is a difficult book to quantify since there are so many overlapping themes that generate a flurry of impressions and emotions. It has therefore compelled me to add another category - Desert Noir. Like the books of James Anderson featuring truckdriver Ben Jones, the pull and mystique of the desert plays a major role here. But the substance is even more elusive in that here there is an art installation sitting on the site of an abandoned army base which once saw atomic bomb testing.
Set in the late 1970's and told from a number of POVs, the book weaves a spell that is hard to look away from. Jess Shepard has made a career out of producing installations reliant upon light and emotion, and into them she infuses her own deep rivers of guilt and grief. Each is unique, dependant upon the inner life of the viewer. At this, her most important piece, we encounter a quartet of damaged people each with their own demons and reasons for being at that spot. The events that ensue are both haunting and up for interpretation. As the narrative moves across a 3 year span, the lives come into richer focus, evidence of a writer at the top of his game.
Set in the late 1970's and told from a number of POVs, the book weaves a spell that is hard to look away from. Jess Shepard has made a career out of producing installations reliant upon light and emotion, and into them she infuses her own deep rivers of guilt and grief. Each is unique, dependant upon the inner life of the viewer. At this, her most important piece, we encounter a quartet of damaged people each with their own demons and reasons for being at that spot. The events that ensue are both haunting and up for interpretation. As the narrative moves across a 3 year span, the lives come into richer focus, evidence of a writer at the top of his game.
September 19, 2020
I would have wanted to read this book even if it didn’t mention the world cult in the description. I absolutely loved O’Connor’s Perfect Universe, it was, in fact, perfect. And this book was just about on the same level of excellence. There’s just something about the way he writes, it’s absolutely luminous. The way the words come alive. In this case they do so to tell the story of grief and something like redemption or second chances. It’s a story of an artist, her creation and the way it affected some of those who experienced it. Set at the end of the 1970s when cults and cultlike mentalities thrived and flourished, which I suppose is the main relevance of the era to the story. Jess, the artist, creates large building size installation works. Zero Zone is one of them, set in the middle of the desert trail near an old military area. It was meant to represent Jess’ grief over the death of her lover, but of course once art is out there it’s up for personal interpretations. But this seems to be the case of grief attracting grief and the building proves magnetic for four profoundly disturbed individuals and the situation subsequently turns into a violent standoff. So as you see, not a cult story per se. One of the four, Tanner, is by all means a cult leader in the making, but the potential is never properly realized, so he’s more of a charismatically eloquent outsider with a death wish and (later) a devoted friend/personal muscle. Then there’s a 16 year old girl so depressed and uncomfortable in her skin that she desperately tries to disappear and, when starvation alone doesn’t do the trick, looks for alternative means. Thwarted, she lashes out, attacking Jess, but eventually it is Jess becomes her rescuer. There are other characters, the sad and lonely waitress who ends up helping the girl, Jess’ brother…Since this is very much a character driven work, their dynamics are very important, crucial, in fact. The overall effect is mosaic, all these incomplete loners, outsiders, misfits trying to…ascend, I suppose, get to a higher plane since this one became so unbearable, and it all comes together and shines as story, however sad, it is somehow (magically) never depressing. There is no outright evil here, everyone’s journey has been shaped by those around them, all roads lead them to Zero Zone. It all boils down to making that final choice, once the destination is reached. For that…you have to read the book. It’s not just character driven, it is very much plot driven also, marketed as literary thriller, so there you go. For me, though, it was less of a thriller and more of a drama, first rate drama, elevated ever so much by absolutely spectacular writing. This is literature at its finest. Less subjective than art. Especially the sort of art in this book. Made me contemplate artist’s moral responsibility for the work they produce. But then again, the nature of madness isn’t strictly location bound and quantifiable or knowable that way. Some might look at a building in the middle of the desert as a novelty, some as art, some as a place of self obliteration…find out what Zero Zone might be for you. Zero Zone, the book, is a thing of beauty. Loved it. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
October 8, 2020
The eerie connection between art and its creator and the emotions and actions ignited by it is the theme of this elegant thriller. It begs a question: are artists in any way responsible for the outsized and intense reactions to their art?
When Jess builds the Zero Zone—a massive concrete, overheated room in near an abandoned atomic bomb testing site in New Mexico—it seems quite avant garde, bringing forth different reactions. But when she is viciously attacked by a teenager named Izzy as a result of her art early on in the novel, her peace of mind is temporarily shattered.
The author wisely doesn’t focus on this pivotal moment as much as he mines the past and present of those who are somehow connected to the incident and the site—from Izzy and her parents to a religious zealot who is in search of her.
Scott O’Connor never falls into the trap of turning this novel into an abstract navel-gazing homily about “what does art mean and why is it important”. The novel is, more than anything, about people—what drives them, emotionally and mentally—combined with a cinematic plot that, at the end of the day, is about undeserved guilt and redemption.
When Jess builds the Zero Zone—a massive concrete, overheated room in near an abandoned atomic bomb testing site in New Mexico—it seems quite avant garde, bringing forth different reactions. But when she is viciously attacked by a teenager named Izzy as a result of her art early on in the novel, her peace of mind is temporarily shattered.
The author wisely doesn’t focus on this pivotal moment as much as he mines the past and present of those who are somehow connected to the incident and the site—from Izzy and her parents to a religious zealot who is in search of her.
Scott O’Connor never falls into the trap of turning this novel into an abstract navel-gazing homily about “what does art mean and why is it important”. The novel is, more than anything, about people—what drives them, emotionally and mentally—combined with a cinematic plot that, at the end of the day, is about undeserved guilt and redemption.
October 6, 2020
Zero Zone is all that I was expecting and more! I was a little bit suspicious of the 5.00 rating on Goodreads, but it does hold up! Zero Zone was an absolutely spectacular read that I finished in one sitting. It was absorbing and interesting, Zero Zone brings something new to the table.
I almost feel that I might be missing out, and I think I'll probably try to re-read this in print because there is so much to unpack. And I will also never feel the same amount of joy reading a paper copy than on a Kindle. But that might be just me!
Zero Zone's main conflict is around an art exhibit gone wrong, and which unintentionally inspired an aggressive cult. We see the before, during, and aftermath of the situation unfolding which I absolutely loved. It's nothing like I've ever read before and the originality of all the characters, settings, and plot points is an immediate plus.
Zero Zone will be released tomorrow, and I'm so happy I quickly found the chance to get to this before NetGalley archived it. It's a very worthy read with a plot and a literary writing style that will not disappoint.
I almost feel that I might be missing out, and I think I'll probably try to re-read this in print because there is so much to unpack. And I will also never feel the same amount of joy reading a paper copy than on a Kindle. But that might be just me!
Zero Zone's main conflict is around an art exhibit gone wrong, and which unintentionally inspired an aggressive cult. We see the before, during, and aftermath of the situation unfolding which I absolutely loved. It's nothing like I've ever read before and the originality of all the characters, settings, and plot points is an immediate plus.
Zero Zone will be released tomorrow, and I'm so happy I quickly found the chance to get to this before NetGalley archived it. It's a very worthy read with a plot and a literary writing style that will not disappoint.
October 6, 2020
The spooky relationship between art and the most extreme responses that it sometimes provokes is the subject of Scott O’Connor’s new novel, “Zero Zone.” It’s a sophisticated thriller that revolves around the work of an installation artist named Jess Shepard. She designs and constructs large pieces that viewers inhabit and interact with. Some people feel nothing but boredom; others are deeply moved. Of course, how anyone reacts is ultimately beyond Jess’s control, beyond even her ability to anticipate. But since artists strive to evoke responses, to what extent is an artist culpable when viewers react very, very badly? That’s the question O’Connor circles around with ever-increasing intensity.
Jess falls into her life’s work almost accidentally while in college. She fabricates a curtained room in which humiliated college women can scream and shatter plates. Most find the experience cathartic and empowering. But one participant goes too far. Jess finds her lying catatonic in a pile of shards and blood. The ER doctor blames Jess; the college dean shuts the site down. Hearing Jess describe what happened, a friend tells her, “It’s a risk. And I don’t think the risk is just to the artist.” Until that moment, Jess hadn’t realized that what she was doing was. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
Jess falls into her life’s work almost accidentally while in college. She fabricates a curtained room in which humiliated college women can scream and shatter plates. Most find the experience cathartic and empowering. But one participant goes too far. Jess finds her lying catatonic in a pile of shards and blood. The ER doctor blames Jess; the college dean shuts the site down. Hearing Jess describe what happened, a friend tells her, “It’s a risk. And I don’t think the risk is just to the artist.” Until that moment, Jess hadn’t realized that what she was doing was. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
April 26, 2020
This is a phenomenal book. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book where I felt different types of light so vividly as the author described them. The characters and story and landscapes are beautifully drawn and full of small, rich detail. I would recommend this highly as a novel but also as an extraordinary visual experience that occurs in the mind’s eye.
I am a librarian and I received an e-arc of this book through Netgalley.
I am a librarian and I received an e-arc of this book through Netgalley.
November 1, 2020
It’s a good book, but I found it a little hard to get into at first. The book is constantly switching between time periods and characters, which makes it a bit jarring. However, this does fit the overall subject and theme of the book, so I understand the author’s decision to jump back and forth (it’s just not my favorite type of book to read).
October 12, 2020
Damn that was fantastic. Review to come.
August 19, 2020
My review will appear in Booklist!
October 29, 2020
This original thriller engrossed me with its unexpected dream-like prose and its sense of time and place. The author, Scott O’Connor, captures the free-flowing 70s in his book about experimental artists in this period. The main character, Jess, is an artist who wants to give her audience a gift, one of a unique experience. Entering in one of her art installations where she manipulates light and space, she invites visitors to be transformed. Her art speaks to people in different ways. Some people enter one of her creations, whether it be a house built with a waterfall or rooms saturated with color, and are temporarily transfixed. Others feel nothing. Then there are the obsessives who go back repeatedly, experiencing something akin to a religious state.
When an unbalanced man, Tanner, a Jim Jones in his ability to convince people to see and do things, becomes drawn to a concrete room Jess built in the desert, he is the catalyst for an event that leaves one man dead and a 16-year old runaway and her traveling companion traumatized. Tanner is the perpetual outsider, his face riddled with bumps, a result of congenital neurofibromatosis. His childhood torment has enabled him to use his voice and presence to bend people to his will. His control is almost hypnotic. Isabella, a teenager who never felt she belonged anywhere, and Martha, a Las Vegas waitress who has just lost her sister, fall under Tanner’s control in the Zero Zone, the concrete desert room. What happens in that room leaves Isabella completely unmoored. A confrontation between Isabella and Jess leaves one physically and both emotionally scarred.
The characters practically walk off the page. All of them have been touched by tragedy or loss in one way or another. Their backstories are filled with grief, but they are searchers looking for something beyond their barren existence. The chapters jump back and forth in time, which creates pacing that never lets the reader get ahead of what O’Conner wants them to experience. The shifting back and forth is choppy and confusing at first, but the reader trusts that the stories and characters intersect. The novel will appeal to readers who enjoy modern art, the transformational 70s, and literary thrillers featuring strong female characters.
I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
When an unbalanced man, Tanner, a Jim Jones in his ability to convince people to see and do things, becomes drawn to a concrete room Jess built in the desert, he is the catalyst for an event that leaves one man dead and a 16-year old runaway and her traveling companion traumatized. Tanner is the perpetual outsider, his face riddled with bumps, a result of congenital neurofibromatosis. His childhood torment has enabled him to use his voice and presence to bend people to his will. His control is almost hypnotic. Isabella, a teenager who never felt she belonged anywhere, and Martha, a Las Vegas waitress who has just lost her sister, fall under Tanner’s control in the Zero Zone, the concrete desert room. What happens in that room leaves Isabella completely unmoored. A confrontation between Isabella and Jess leaves one physically and both emotionally scarred.
The characters practically walk off the page. All of them have been touched by tragedy or loss in one way or another. Their backstories are filled with grief, but they are searchers looking for something beyond their barren existence. The chapters jump back and forth in time, which creates pacing that never lets the reader get ahead of what O’Conner wants them to experience. The shifting back and forth is choppy and confusing at first, but the reader trusts that the stories and characters intersect. The novel will appeal to readers who enjoy modern art, the transformational 70s, and literary thrillers featuring strong female characters.
I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
October 14, 2020
This book intrigued me from the beginning. Told from different points of view and in different time frames, it focuses on an art installation in the desert and a cult that attaches itself to the installation. Jess, the creator of the art installation goes through many emotional phases as she looks back on her childhood, reminisces about the installation and the furor that accompanied it, and deals with the people who are all wanting a piece of her. This book will appeal to anyone who is interested in art and the ramifications it can have on our lives.
April 9, 2021
This was such a surprise, a novel by an author unknown to me that grabbed me from the first page and never let go. It is about art, and grief, and loss, and our place in the universe all tied up into a plot that teeters on the edge of being a thriller.
Jess is an artist in her young 30s who lost both of her parent in a car accident when she was young. Her brother Zack and herself were then raised by their Aunt Ruth in LA. She becomes an artist, working in the field of creating contemporary space installations. In 1979, she creates a bunker style building called Zero Aone in the middle of the desert in New Mexico where some nuclear bomb testing had taken place. A group of pilgrims set off on the trail to the building, a few of them becoming obsessed with it. Something bad happens there, which leads to Izzy, a teenage girl, attacking Jess at an art exhibition. Jess's face has a permanent scar from it. There is also a cult like figure named Tanner who wants to use Izzy to pass on to a better place down at Zero Zone.
Izzy is put in a juvenile detention center after the attack, and when she is released, it inspires Jess to go on a personal journal to finally come to terms with what happened at her structure two years previous. All this ends in a climatic event down at the structure.
The author is very knowledgeable and references some very interesting people throughout the novel, notably Agnes Varda and Chantal Ackerman, two French female directors. The story is very well told and deals with some very important universal issues, especially how the concept of art fits into our being. It was satisfying on many levels for this reader.
Jess is an artist in her young 30s who lost both of her parent in a car accident when she was young. Her brother Zack and herself were then raised by their Aunt Ruth in LA. She becomes an artist, working in the field of creating contemporary space installations. In 1979, she creates a bunker style building called Zero Aone in the middle of the desert in New Mexico where some nuclear bomb testing had taken place. A group of pilgrims set off on the trail to the building, a few of them becoming obsessed with it. Something bad happens there, which leads to Izzy, a teenage girl, attacking Jess at an art exhibition. Jess's face has a permanent scar from it. There is also a cult like figure named Tanner who wants to use Izzy to pass on to a better place down at Zero Zone.
Izzy is put in a juvenile detention center after the attack, and when she is released, it inspires Jess to go on a personal journal to finally come to terms with what happened at her structure two years previous. All this ends in a climatic event down at the structure.
The author is very knowledgeable and references some very interesting people throughout the novel, notably Agnes Varda and Chantal Ackerman, two French female directors. The story is very well told and deals with some very important universal issues, especially how the concept of art fits into our being. It was satisfying on many levels for this reader.
October 7, 2020
Scott O’Connor’s new novel, “Zero Zone”, revolves around an eponymous art installation which was built in the desert of New Mexico in 1977, where quite quickly things went horribly wrong.
The novel starts with a calamitous and dramatic event, foreshadowing a plot that contains several dramatic calamities! Buckle your seat-belt.
Jess Shepard, the artist, has set out to create art that affects viewers in a profound and unique way. “Zero Zone” also changes Jess as well, both physically and emotionally. All artist seek to affect their viewers, and the novel explores the triumvirate relationship among the Artist, the Art, and the Viewer.
When what you have created has unintended consequences, what are your responsibilities? What can you be held accountable for? These are the basic questions the novel asks.
(I particularly loved the late 1970s setting; it brought back a lot of old memories; long gas lines, Three Mile Island, no answering machines!)
If you enjoy reading about art, artists, and the artistic journey (as I do!) this mystery/thriller should fit the bill!
The novel starts with a calamitous and dramatic event, foreshadowing a plot that contains several dramatic calamities! Buckle your seat-belt.
Jess Shepard, the artist, has set out to create art that affects viewers in a profound and unique way. “Zero Zone” also changes Jess as well, both physically and emotionally. All artist seek to affect their viewers, and the novel explores the triumvirate relationship among the Artist, the Art, and the Viewer.
When what you have created has unintended consequences, what are your responsibilities? What can you be held accountable for? These are the basic questions the novel asks.
(I particularly loved the late 1970s setting; it brought back a lot of old memories; long gas lines, Three Mile Island, no answering machines!)
If you enjoy reading about art, artists, and the artistic journey (as I do!) this mystery/thriller should fit the bill!
September 21, 2020
I love everything about this book. Highly recommend it!
The author's voice is so vivid that I could look through the text as if I were watching a really involving thriller in the movies.
The plot is twisted in an intriguing way, the characters are becoming very close to you, known and understood with all their problems and traumas.
Reading was a mesmerizing journey. I'll definitely read other Scott O'Connor's novels, cause that's a real pleasure.
The author's voice is so vivid that I could look through the text as if I were watching a really involving thriller in the movies.
The plot is twisted in an intriguing way, the characters are becoming very close to you, known and understood with all their problems and traumas.
Reading was a mesmerizing journey. I'll definitely read other Scott O'Connor's novels, cause that's a real pleasure.
September 11, 2020
An extraordinary book touching on several themes: how art is inspired, experienced and interpreted, responsibility and guilt, healing spiritual and emotional wounds. I wish that I could experience some of the installations described for myself!
August 24, 2020
Zero Zone is a literary thriller about an infamous desert art installation, the cult it inspired, and a series of violent events. Its compelling and suspenseful prose creates a cinematic reading experience that explores the relationship between humans and art.
October 6, 2020
At its very best, ZERO ZONE was transcendent and moving. O’Connor’s artistic flair for conveying installation art was mesmerizing. The protagonist, Jess, creates structures that in turn creates enigmatic rooms and spaces. Her pieces play with light, shadow, and zones that produce a sense of movement—specifically, a movement from one realm to another. Our temporal life moves into another space or place—one that is beyond that which we can typically see.
Jess is an artist that became frustrated with canvas and paints. Her installations were inspired by an unresolved grief of a fellow artist/ex-boyfriend. Little did she know that her followers were also attracted to her installations by their deep sense of loss and grief. Several of Jess’s installations are believably and beautifully described. Moreover, the intensity of one piece, at a New Mexico former bomb site, became the central focus and pain of this story.
I won’t go into the plot except to say that it takes place largely in the late 1970s, when Jess is in her 30s and her brother, Zack, is two years older. They lost their parents to a car accident when they were children and went to live with their bohemian aunt, who encouraged their creativity and imaginations. The prologue is past and takes us to the moment that Jess first felt a desire to recreate an ethereal moment where she moved from one place to another, outside time and space.
Later, as a successful artist, Jess became known for the intense emotions her pieces evoked in others, including people that aren’t too emotionally stable. It leads to a tragedy that shuts Jess down and depresses her into inertia. “...she had only managed to create more anger and grief, infecting others with what she made.”
O’Connor’s characters are fully three-dimensional and their vivid depictions were credible and fertile. I related to Jess’s anguish as well as the desperation and despair of her antagonist, Izzy. Izzy is only 16 when she causes harm to Jess at an art gallery; she is angry that Jess closed down her installation in the New Mexico desert after an incident in which the teenager was involved. (Readers will get to this on their own, without me spelling it out.)
There is one character, Tanner, who is particularized with vivid detail; however, I had a hard time believing him as a magnetic cult leader who is able to manipulate almost all men and women he comes into contact with, once he finds his confidence. That was the snag I was stuck on at times. He is the book’s Elephant Man, so to speak, but not a good person. As hard as O’Connor attempted to paint him as a charismatic cult leader, I felt nothing but revulsion for him. And I don’t think most people could lower their filters so easily and generously as the author attests. I was not convinced by the qualities he placed on Tanner.
Another problem I had was how the characters interacted to move the story along. Instead of organic development, it felt as if O’Connor executed a certain chemistry or understanding between characters when he needed the story to mobilize in a certain direction. For example, and without spoilers, Jess meets people later on that she facilely apprehends, and I struggled to accept their easy nature together, how they swiftly fell into place to accept each other.
There were other characters who did this, and it seemed a ploy to progress the storyline. The relationships developed too quickly and artificially, a freshman writer’s pitfalls (and he isn’t a freshman writer). Jess is a closed off individual with serious issues, and the mechanics that the author employed to open her up felt contrived. Her characters weren’t cookie-cutter, but the plot advancement from their interactions were too easily dispensed.
If I sounded negative, it is because I am a bit torn on my response to this narrative. The writing is lucid and elegant. Where it fails for me is how the unique plot cannily progresses—a contradiction between the story and its execution. So it is O’Connor’s logistics that aren’t credulous. The development of story into one coherent whole is where it breaks down for me.
However, I remained absorbed, too, much of the time. The metaphysical aspect to Jess’s art, and O’Connor’s prose, yielded a layered texture and simmering tone to the story. And the arid desert in the novel was enigmatic and vibrant despite its symbol of death. I closed the book feeling a sense of wonder and benevolence, beyond the story's twee denouement. Even if the sublime was occasionally thwarted by the author’s engineering of events, I came away with its resonant themes of loss, loneliness, and the ultimate search for connection.
3.5 rounded up
Jess is an artist that became frustrated with canvas and paints. Her installations were inspired by an unresolved grief of a fellow artist/ex-boyfriend. Little did she know that her followers were also attracted to her installations by their deep sense of loss and grief. Several of Jess’s installations are believably and beautifully described. Moreover, the intensity of one piece, at a New Mexico former bomb site, became the central focus and pain of this story.
I won’t go into the plot except to say that it takes place largely in the late 1970s, when Jess is in her 30s and her brother, Zack, is two years older. They lost their parents to a car accident when they were children and went to live with their bohemian aunt, who encouraged their creativity and imaginations. The prologue is past and takes us to the moment that Jess first felt a desire to recreate an ethereal moment where she moved from one place to another, outside time and space.
Later, as a successful artist, Jess became known for the intense emotions her pieces evoked in others, including people that aren’t too emotionally stable. It leads to a tragedy that shuts Jess down and depresses her into inertia. “...she had only managed to create more anger and grief, infecting others with what she made.”
O’Connor’s characters are fully three-dimensional and their vivid depictions were credible and fertile. I related to Jess’s anguish as well as the desperation and despair of her antagonist, Izzy. Izzy is only 16 when she causes harm to Jess at an art gallery; she is angry that Jess closed down her installation in the New Mexico desert after an incident in which the teenager was involved. (Readers will get to this on their own, without me spelling it out.)
There is one character, Tanner, who is particularized with vivid detail; however, I had a hard time believing him as a magnetic cult leader who is able to manipulate almost all men and women he comes into contact with, once he finds his confidence. That was the snag I was stuck on at times. He is the book’s Elephant Man, so to speak, but not a good person. As hard as O’Connor attempted to paint him as a charismatic cult leader, I felt nothing but revulsion for him. And I don’t think most people could lower their filters so easily and generously as the author attests. I was not convinced by the qualities he placed on Tanner.
Another problem I had was how the characters interacted to move the story along. Instead of organic development, it felt as if O’Connor executed a certain chemistry or understanding between characters when he needed the story to mobilize in a certain direction. For example, and without spoilers, Jess meets people later on that she facilely apprehends, and I struggled to accept their easy nature together, how they swiftly fell into place to accept each other.
There were other characters who did this, and it seemed a ploy to progress the storyline. The relationships developed too quickly and artificially, a freshman writer’s pitfalls (and he isn’t a freshman writer). Jess is a closed off individual with serious issues, and the mechanics that the author employed to open her up felt contrived. Her characters weren’t cookie-cutter, but the plot advancement from their interactions were too easily dispensed.
If I sounded negative, it is because I am a bit torn on my response to this narrative. The writing is lucid and elegant. Where it fails for me is how the unique plot cannily progresses—a contradiction between the story and its execution. So it is O’Connor’s logistics that aren’t credulous. The development of story into one coherent whole is where it breaks down for me.
However, I remained absorbed, too, much of the time. The metaphysical aspect to Jess’s art, and O’Connor’s prose, yielded a layered texture and simmering tone to the story. And the arid desert in the novel was enigmatic and vibrant despite its symbol of death. I closed the book feeling a sense of wonder and benevolence, beyond the story's twee denouement. Even if the sublime was occasionally thwarted by the author’s engineering of events, I came away with its resonant themes of loss, loneliness, and the ultimate search for connection.
3.5 rounded up
October 6, 2020
A (literally) amazing, enthralling read. My full review, for ZYZZYVA magazine, is linked below:
“The guards let them stay in the dayroom longer than usual, on account of the fact that the world might end,’’ Scott O’Connor allows, writing about a convict named Tanner and his friend Emmett deep into his enthralling new novel, Zero Zone (Counterpoint Press, 320 pages).
The “fact’’ in question is the Three Mile Island meltdown—the jailbirds are disappointed that it fizzles, but there’s more—much more—apocalyptic tension to come here.
O’Connor’s work is a spooky, sometimes sepulchral portrait of the confluence between the overlapping lives of Jess Shepard, a Los Angeles installation artist who has created a space near an abandoned bomb shelter, and Isabelle Serrano, a troubled Pasadena adolescent who slashes Jess’ cheek—paging Valerie Solanas—at a gallery opening to retaliate for the artist calling the cops after the afore-mentioned Tanner, a self-styled guru holed up at Zero Zone in the pursuit of a millenarian, Rapture-like escape from the world we deceive ourselves into thinking we know.
But plot summaries (the least rewarding aspects of the reviewing project) do not begin to do justice to the author’s measured invitations to join him into the vertiginous worlds his characters inhabit. It’s a combination of a literal ghost story—O’Connor is also an accomplished television writer, and his story arc training serves him well—and a metaphysical attempt to question the ground on which we stand, the air we breathe. What is real? he asks, providing no answers.
https://www.zyzzyva.org/2020/10/06/ze...
“The guards let them stay in the dayroom longer than usual, on account of the fact that the world might end,’’ Scott O’Connor allows, writing about a convict named Tanner and his friend Emmett deep into his enthralling new novel, Zero Zone (Counterpoint Press, 320 pages).
The “fact’’ in question is the Three Mile Island meltdown—the jailbirds are disappointed that it fizzles, but there’s more—much more—apocalyptic tension to come here.
O’Connor’s work is a spooky, sometimes sepulchral portrait of the confluence between the overlapping lives of Jess Shepard, a Los Angeles installation artist who has created a space near an abandoned bomb shelter, and Isabelle Serrano, a troubled Pasadena adolescent who slashes Jess’ cheek—paging Valerie Solanas—at a gallery opening to retaliate for the artist calling the cops after the afore-mentioned Tanner, a self-styled guru holed up at Zero Zone in the pursuit of a millenarian, Rapture-like escape from the world we deceive ourselves into thinking we know.
But plot summaries (the least rewarding aspects of the reviewing project) do not begin to do justice to the author’s measured invitations to join him into the vertiginous worlds his characters inhabit. It’s a combination of a literal ghost story—O’Connor is also an accomplished television writer, and his story arc training serves him well—and a metaphysical attempt to question the ground on which we stand, the air we breathe. What is real? he asks, providing no answers.
https://www.zyzzyva.org/2020/10/06/ze...
October 18, 2020
I won this in a Goodreads giveaway.
A story about desert art installation and the cult it inspired. Revolves around the lives of the artist and those sucked into the cult. Intriguing read.
A story about desert art installation and the cult it inspired. Revolves around the lives of the artist and those sucked into the cult. Intriguing read.
Read
October 26, 2020Atmospheric, artistic, adventure thriller that’s also a strange to read experience.
“Zero Zone”, by Scott O’Connor, left me wanting more; more details about motivational events, more character development and more ending. What there was plenty of was scene/time changes. It felt like watching a tennis match where the point kept being fouled out.
O’Connor is deft with the descriptive prose and his ability to paint verbal landscapes is lovely. That skill doesn’t transition to relationships, emotions or dialogue. By using an omniscient narrator, I was left wondering, “WHY”, many times, when it came to key plot points. Those points are intimately involved in the characterizations of the 3-4 main players of the story, which just kept me frustrated.
If you’re an artist or lover of art, don’t expect great insights or passages that elucidate the works of installation art pieces or the genre itself; nothing close to that exists in these pages. I was hoping for a journey into “light and space” and got left out in the dark, for the most part. In fact, the one really fine passage that does explore light and space has nothing to do with the art world proper, whatsoever. Sigh...
Quick moving with bit of tension during the closing scenes save this story from being forgettable. It was too little too late, IMO.
All things considered, a bit lacking in development 📚
“Zero Zone”, by Scott O’Connor, left me wanting more; more details about motivational events, more character development and more ending. What there was plenty of was scene/time changes. It felt like watching a tennis match where the point kept being fouled out.
O’Connor is deft with the descriptive prose and his ability to paint verbal landscapes is lovely. That skill doesn’t transition to relationships, emotions or dialogue. By using an omniscient narrator, I was left wondering, “WHY”, many times, when it came to key plot points. Those points are intimately involved in the characterizations of the 3-4 main players of the story, which just kept me frustrated.
If you’re an artist or lover of art, don’t expect great insights or passages that elucidate the works of installation art pieces or the genre itself; nothing close to that exists in these pages. I was hoping for a journey into “light and space” and got left out in the dark, for the most part. In fact, the one really fine passage that does explore light and space has nothing to do with the art world proper, whatsoever. Sigh...
Quick moving with bit of tension during the closing scenes save this story from being forgettable. It was too little too late, IMO.
All things considered, a bit lacking in development 📚
August 29, 2021
wow.
I really really loved it.
reminded me of Gyaasi’s work in the way it seamlessly jumped between time and people in a way that came together so perfectly and consciously
Reminded me of “my year of rest and relaxation” because while I appreciated the creativity involved with inventing and depicting art exhibitions THIS is the way it should have been done. Moving and powerful and INWARDS in that it draws on the viewer and the reader’s desires and shame and fear and pain
Reminded me of all the fantasy and science fiction I read in that it incorporated the unknown and unbelievable in a way that was truly magical
Ugh so so good
*** although I didn’t LOVE the ending i would have loved if it was a little less predictable but I also get it and why it was done and love this idea of a floating sensation between life and death that is fear
I really really loved it.
reminded me of Gyaasi’s work in the way it seamlessly jumped between time and people in a way that came together so perfectly and consciously
Reminded me of “my year of rest and relaxation” because while I appreciated the creativity involved with inventing and depicting art exhibitions THIS is the way it should have been done. Moving and powerful and INWARDS in that it draws on the viewer and the reader’s desires and shame and fear and pain
Reminded me of all the fantasy and science fiction I read in that it incorporated the unknown and unbelievable in a way that was truly magical
Ugh so so good
*** although I didn’t LOVE the ending i would have loved if it was a little less predictable but I also get it and why it was done and love this idea of a floating sensation between life and death that is fear
Read
January 17, 2021This book has received nice reviews, but was not to my personal taste. It felt like a Concept Novel, as if the author had an idea for a book and plugged in a bunch of characters to move a plot forward. I wouldn't recommend it.
October 6, 2020
Artist = myth,
the artist creates second-hand reality, i.e.,
creation is wholly dependent on observation,
art lacks every verity, it is a bastardized construct.
#poem
Chris Roberts, Patron Saint to the Unbeing
the artist creates second-hand reality, i.e.,
creation is wholly dependent on observation,
art lacks every verity, it is a bastardized construct.
#poem
Chris Roberts, Patron Saint to the Unbeing
January 18, 2021
Brilliant. Strong ethical question beneath the suspense, vivid sensory description, and when we switched POV i did not sigh in disappointment at being pulled away from Jess, because each character was vivid and interesting. Beautiful writing.
physical_to-read_stack
October 11, 2020I received my copy free through Goodreads Giveaways.
February 10, 2021
Zero Zone (2020) by Scott O’Connor
Counterpoint Press
Fiction /Thriller/Mystery
A Terrible Beauty, a Beautiful Terror, and the Mysterious Moral Responsibility of Art
“‘Stay open to those surprises that rise up in the middle of what you thought you knew.’”
* * *
What is the responsibility of the artist? What is the danger of letting art loose upon the world? How is art both therapeutic and a site of healing yet also a catalyst for more pain, mania, and confusion—even violence? We like to think that connecting to art through and with people is a beautiful thing but what if some connections unleash something dangerous? What if being similar to someone else unhinges us through an excessive amount of collaborative feeling—the wrong kind of feeling (if it exists)?
Scott O’Connor’s immersive novel Zero Zone (2020) offers these questions about the moral responsibility of artists and audiences, shrouding the story of Jess Shepard, a 30-something-year-old artist in late-1970s California, in a veil of mystery and suspense. Two years prior, one of her exhibits moved a quartet of strangers so much that a runaway teenaged girl attacks and scars her. A young ex-con is shot to his death. A Las Vegas waitress seeking purpose after her sister’s passing is caught in the middle. And a megalomaniacal fanatic with a strange rock-like skin condition is the leader of this nightmare. O’Connor toys with “the uncertain, electric thread that could form between two people,” or a whole host and generation of strangers. But to make and view art is worth the potential fatal shock of electricity, because, sometimes, it is just enough current to awaken the slumbering soul.
But there’s no guarantee how this electrical spark will work. Art, O’Connor intimates, is always a gamble riskier and more life-shattering than non-artists may realize. It’s Jess who led this motley crew there, on the precipice of insanity and destruction, and incidentally, simply in making Zero Zone. Though she thinks she creates something holy, she realizes too late that “[t]his wasn’t grace. This was obliteration.” O’Connor’s work consequently suggests that art is not meant for the artist alone; the danger is what happens when creators let their creations loose upon the world. When one of the fanatics tells Jess, “‘[y]ou have no idea what you made,’” and Zero Zone becomes “[t]hat glorious, terrible beauty,” what we find at the center of this novel is a modern Frankenstein story of beautiful terror and no murderous monster created directly but indirectly—because Jess’ artwork does set off a strong of dangerous and deadly activity that weighs on her and sends her spiraling towards the murky truth.
While Zero Zone does have moments that read like a detective story, our inspector here is Jess herself—an amateur playing it by ear. She is a confused, broken, orphaned woman whose art comes to her through dreams and feeling—perhaps even the absorption of her film-curating brother’s art. Her creations are mammoth structures—sheds in the middle of the woods, curtained contours in a room where harassed women can break objects to release anger; the Zero Zone itself is a concrete room in middle of an old military base in the desert, designed to capture slivers of light at different times of day and allow visitors to transcend themselves.
O’Connor blends mystery and mystic visions in his novel, and though Jess is our central figure, the work also combines well the perspectives of that aforementioned clutch of four main “believers” who abuse Jess’ Zero Zone piece and others who become ensnared by their obsessions, cruelties, and longings.
It’s also the kind of novel that could only take place before the 1980s. With the Internet, cellphones, social media, GPS, and the like, such stories would never exist in today’s world. There would be no road-tripping through California and Nevada (during the gas shortage in the ‘70s, no less) with little guidance and no knowledge as to where someone is located. It would be hard to disappear, become untraceable by the police. A young woman sneaks out of a hospital without nary a video camera capturing her escape. Jess must use an answering service or payphones or (gasp!) even show up at someone’s house to get her messages heard. While Zero Zone isn’t exactly “historical fiction” in the anticipated sense, it does carry with it the burden of nostalgizing this particular era. Jess is born in the 1940s and our story takes us up through the 1970s. Her brother is a collector of rare and historical films—celluloid reels clutter up his apartment. He hunts down and splices together the “newfangled” videotapes of news and found footage. There’s an exciting theme of curating and creation here that makes it easy to long for the thrill of the chase—finding “lost” films, creating ambitious structures in forgotten natural settings, and making art so that people can simply go see it for themselves—rather than stand in front of it with a smartphone and take selfies, or view the real deal through a filter.
Furthermore, the novel is written in a combination of third-person narrative that moves in time and space, descriptions of various art exhibits and pieces, and even a transcript of an interview with Jess (keep your eyes on this—there’s a “reveal” about it and the filmmaker by the end).
Overall, Zero Zone is fast-moving, quick prose that doesn’t linger overly-long on description. For a novel about art, O’Connor does not indulge himself in over-analyzing Jess’ pieces and offers just the right about of detail for us to easily envision these exhibits or areas. Even more, this is a novel about people trying and struggling to be more than the world will let them be, people who are trying to “exist in two places at the same time.” What are these two places, though? And are they enough? What lies beyond the body—beyond the realm of sight and touch? What is our responsibility, too, in both creating and experiencing the art that allows us to be more than we think we are? Although Zero Zone may not be as riveting as a fast-paced car chase in an adventure movie, nor as dark and disturbing as hard-boiled crime literature, it does a moving job in presenting the artist as a vital player in the history of the world, for better or worse. Art is a gun and its consumers are all bullets. Sometimes, those bullets are content to rattle around in a box but, sometimes, they get loaded…but whose duty is it to stop the pulling of the trigger?
Counterpoint Press
Fiction /Thriller/Mystery
A Terrible Beauty, a Beautiful Terror, and the Mysterious Moral Responsibility of Art
“‘Stay open to those surprises that rise up in the middle of what you thought you knew.’”
* * *
What is the responsibility of the artist? What is the danger of letting art loose upon the world? How is art both therapeutic and a site of healing yet also a catalyst for more pain, mania, and confusion—even violence? We like to think that connecting to art through and with people is a beautiful thing but what if some connections unleash something dangerous? What if being similar to someone else unhinges us through an excessive amount of collaborative feeling—the wrong kind of feeling (if it exists)?
Scott O’Connor’s immersive novel Zero Zone (2020) offers these questions about the moral responsibility of artists and audiences, shrouding the story of Jess Shepard, a 30-something-year-old artist in late-1970s California, in a veil of mystery and suspense. Two years prior, one of her exhibits moved a quartet of strangers so much that a runaway teenaged girl attacks and scars her. A young ex-con is shot to his death. A Las Vegas waitress seeking purpose after her sister’s passing is caught in the middle. And a megalomaniacal fanatic with a strange rock-like skin condition is the leader of this nightmare. O’Connor toys with “the uncertain, electric thread that could form between two people,” or a whole host and generation of strangers. But to make and view art is worth the potential fatal shock of electricity, because, sometimes, it is just enough current to awaken the slumbering soul.
But there’s no guarantee how this electrical spark will work. Art, O’Connor intimates, is always a gamble riskier and more life-shattering than non-artists may realize. It’s Jess who led this motley crew there, on the precipice of insanity and destruction, and incidentally, simply in making Zero Zone. Though she thinks she creates something holy, she realizes too late that “[t]his wasn’t grace. This was obliteration.” O’Connor’s work consequently suggests that art is not meant for the artist alone; the danger is what happens when creators let their creations loose upon the world. When one of the fanatics tells Jess, “‘[y]ou have no idea what you made,’” and Zero Zone becomes “[t]hat glorious, terrible beauty,” what we find at the center of this novel is a modern Frankenstein story of beautiful terror and no murderous monster created directly but indirectly—because Jess’ artwork does set off a strong of dangerous and deadly activity that weighs on her and sends her spiraling towards the murky truth.
While Zero Zone does have moments that read like a detective story, our inspector here is Jess herself—an amateur playing it by ear. She is a confused, broken, orphaned woman whose art comes to her through dreams and feeling—perhaps even the absorption of her film-curating brother’s art. Her creations are mammoth structures—sheds in the middle of the woods, curtained contours in a room where harassed women can break objects to release anger; the Zero Zone itself is a concrete room in middle of an old military base in the desert, designed to capture slivers of light at different times of day and allow visitors to transcend themselves.
O’Connor blends mystery and mystic visions in his novel, and though Jess is our central figure, the work also combines well the perspectives of that aforementioned clutch of four main “believers” who abuse Jess’ Zero Zone piece and others who become ensnared by their obsessions, cruelties, and longings.
It’s also the kind of novel that could only take place before the 1980s. With the Internet, cellphones, social media, GPS, and the like, such stories would never exist in today’s world. There would be no road-tripping through California and Nevada (during the gas shortage in the ‘70s, no less) with little guidance and no knowledge as to where someone is located. It would be hard to disappear, become untraceable by the police. A young woman sneaks out of a hospital without nary a video camera capturing her escape. Jess must use an answering service or payphones or (gasp!) even show up at someone’s house to get her messages heard. While Zero Zone isn’t exactly “historical fiction” in the anticipated sense, it does carry with it the burden of nostalgizing this particular era. Jess is born in the 1940s and our story takes us up through the 1970s. Her brother is a collector of rare and historical films—celluloid reels clutter up his apartment. He hunts down and splices together the “newfangled” videotapes of news and found footage. There’s an exciting theme of curating and creation here that makes it easy to long for the thrill of the chase—finding “lost” films, creating ambitious structures in forgotten natural settings, and making art so that people can simply go see it for themselves—rather than stand in front of it with a smartphone and take selfies, or view the real deal through a filter.
Furthermore, the novel is written in a combination of third-person narrative that moves in time and space, descriptions of various art exhibits and pieces, and even a transcript of an interview with Jess (keep your eyes on this—there’s a “reveal” about it and the filmmaker by the end).
Overall, Zero Zone is fast-moving, quick prose that doesn’t linger overly-long on description. For a novel about art, O’Connor does not indulge himself in over-analyzing Jess’ pieces and offers just the right about of detail for us to easily envision these exhibits or areas. Even more, this is a novel about people trying and struggling to be more than the world will let them be, people who are trying to “exist in two places at the same time.” What are these two places, though? And are they enough? What lies beyond the body—beyond the realm of sight and touch? What is our responsibility, too, in both creating and experiencing the art that allows us to be more than we think we are? Although Zero Zone may not be as riveting as a fast-paced car chase in an adventure movie, nor as dark and disturbing as hard-boiled crime literature, it does a moving job in presenting the artist as a vital player in the history of the world, for better or worse. Art is a gun and its consumers are all bullets. Sometimes, those bullets are content to rattle around in a box but, sometimes, they get loaded…but whose duty is it to stop the pulling of the trigger?
January 21, 2021
In recent years, I've read several novels about conceptual artists - Rachel Kushner's hugely overhyped The Flamethrowers, the far superior Fake Like Me by Barbara Bourland and now Zero Zone by Scott O'Connor. Personally, I love conceptual art. Performance art (like Marina Abramovic's The Artist is Present) or site specific pieces (like Christo's The Gates at Central Park) are all about ideas as opposed to objects. And it always fascinates me to see how a novelist comes up with a credible and intriguing contemporary art concept.
Zero Zone is the story of Jess Shepard, an artist who spends her entire adult life trying to recapture the light she saw and elation she felt when she nearly drowned as a child. After establishing a reputation with her immersive and emotionally resonant in situ installations, she creates a small building at a former nuclear testing site in the New Mexican desert. Jess recognizes a certain energy there that's akin to the near death experience of her youth. The installation eventually attracts a group of misfits, including a violent ex-con with a disfiguring condition and an epileptic teenaged girl, each chasing his/her own version of the same rapturous feeling that called to Jess. They end up barricading themselves inside, leading to a deadly showdown with the law. The fall out (pun intended) from this incident haunts Jess for years afterward.
The story is told through the points of view of several characters and shifts back and forth through time, slowly revealing the complete picture. The book shares a lot of DNA with a traditional thriller. There's suspense, mystery, an undeniable villain and a nail-biting climax. While I'm not particularly a fan of that genre, this is so much more than that. Throughout the story, O'Connor touches on the philosophical concept of Eternalism, the belief that all time is equally real. The non-linear structure of the book leans into this as does the idea that the site of a decades old nuclear blast still holds light and energy palpable only to those who've experienced, however briefly, a taste of the eternal.
This is a very engaging book. If you're not interested in the ideas, you can simply enjoy it for the complex, believable characters, the labyrinthine plot and the edge-of-your-seat suspense.
Zero Zone is the story of Jess Shepard, an artist who spends her entire adult life trying to recapture the light she saw and elation she felt when she nearly drowned as a child. After establishing a reputation with her immersive and emotionally resonant in situ installations, she creates a small building at a former nuclear testing site in the New Mexican desert. Jess recognizes a certain energy there that's akin to the near death experience of her youth. The installation eventually attracts a group of misfits, including a violent ex-con with a disfiguring condition and an epileptic teenaged girl, each chasing his/her own version of the same rapturous feeling that called to Jess. They end up barricading themselves inside, leading to a deadly showdown with the law. The fall out (pun intended) from this incident haunts Jess for years afterward.
The story is told through the points of view of several characters and shifts back and forth through time, slowly revealing the complete picture. The book shares a lot of DNA with a traditional thriller. There's suspense, mystery, an undeniable villain and a nail-biting climax. While I'm not particularly a fan of that genre, this is so much more than that. Throughout the story, O'Connor touches on the philosophical concept of Eternalism, the belief that all time is equally real. The non-linear structure of the book leans into this as does the idea that the site of a decades old nuclear blast still holds light and energy palpable only to those who've experienced, however briefly, a taste of the eternal.
This is a very engaging book. If you're not interested in the ideas, you can simply enjoy it for the complex, believable characters, the labyrinthine plot and the edge-of-your-seat suspense.
April 6, 2021
A very atmospheric book set in the late 1970s in California. Jess is an installation artist who creates "rooms" designed to induce pleasurable emotions/perceptions in the visitors. However, from the first pages it's clear that Jess has hit a creative wall because of her unresolved guilt and fear resulting from her project "Zero zone". This room, built in the middle of a hiking trail in the desert, was the scene of a tragic confrontation during which one person died. And one of the survivors then stalked Jess and attacked her during a gallery opening. Isabella is now released from prison, and her parents are worried about her. So Jess turns herself into a detective and goes looking for the unhappy girl who once attacked her.
The story is told in constantly changing POV, and it becomes clear that this is a tale of haunted people. Not just Jess, but also her brother, and the small band of people who occupy Zero Zone - I won't say more for fear of spoiling the story. All of these people have unusual perceptions - Jess because she's an artist, another person because of epilepsy, another because of an ongoing mourning process and sense of alienation. My brain and perceptions don't work like in the characters in this book - but that's why I enjoyed the book. It really drew me into a different world, not just physically (space and time), but into the brains of people who think/feel/experience in a way that's very distinct from mine. It was not always easy, but the changing POV helped in that regard - it helped me switch from one person's story to another person's story before I got too lost.
I will seek out other books by this author.
The story is told in constantly changing POV, and it becomes clear that this is a tale of haunted people. Not just Jess, but also her brother, and the small band of people who occupy Zero Zone - I won't say more for fear of spoiling the story. All of these people have unusual perceptions - Jess because she's an artist, another person because of epilepsy, another because of an ongoing mourning process and sense of alienation. My brain and perceptions don't work like in the characters in this book - but that's why I enjoyed the book. It really drew me into a different world, not just physically (space and time), but into the brains of people who think/feel/experience in a way that's very distinct from mine. It was not always easy, but the changing POV helped in that regard - it helped me switch from one person's story to another person's story before I got too lost.
I will seek out other books by this author.
April 6, 2023
I can understand why some readers may not appreciate this novel, but I truly identified with it. It's about the indefinable power of art, and a host of characters, some of them zealots, some artists, and some just troubled, who are all involved with violence perpetuated by an interactive art room in the desert. I found all of the characters truly honest and involving, from the artist to her brother to others who are affected by the room. But it's more than this really. The novel is about how art inspires action, troubled or no, and the visceral action that art may ignite. The small group of characters we grow to know are enigmatic, some recognizable, most not, but the idea that art can actually lead to transformation, change, growth, and even violence speaks to me. Scott O'Connor is an excellent writer, sensitive and ultimately optimistic, and the book actually creates a world inspired by the art in it. A good achievement for sure.
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