Zealous Immaculate

by Audrey Szasz

LIFE DURING WARTIME

"Basking like a reptile in your reflected glories. I just respond. Sometimes I don’t even do that. I just do whatever I end up doing. No thought. No plan. No real motive. No overarching theories or philosophies. I can’t even stick to a routine. I lack discipline. Can you give it to me? Can you tell me what to do? Can you force me to do whatever is necessary to survive? From one day to the next, until the very end? Will you give me the beating I deserve?"

A major novel of perversity and pleasure from a richly exciting new literary talent.

Apparently orphaned in a foreign land engulfed by civil war, Tamara finds herself in an isolated and notoriously mismanaged home for abandoned children. Initially unable to comprehend the local language, she attempts to communicate nonverbally, having seemingly lost the faculty of speech. Unaware of her parents' true whereabouts – or whether in fact they are even alive – Tamara struggles to make herself understood and to survive in this alien environment where chaos reigns and brutality – or sheer indifference – unfortunately appears to be the norm....

Genres: Fiction

214 pages, Hardcover

First published April 28, 2022

About the author

Instagram: @szasz_audrey

Reviews

[Janie · Rating 5 out of 5]

"... the mediocrity of childhood eye-wateringly parasitic every single infringement the prohibition of speech emotional vertigo zealous immaculate silence."

[Christopher Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zealous Immaculate is ugly and beautiful and brutal and dizzying and deeply, deeply troubling on pretty much every conceivable level. Equal parts stylish and scarring. The less you know the better, but if you’re the sort that needs trigger warnings you’re advised to steer well clear; I’m fairly certain this novel encompasses pretty much all of the taboos, major and minor alike (and maybe even invents a few new ones along the way).

The fates of Marcel and Sebastian will stick with me for a very, very long time. And that’s all I’ll say about anything relating to the story. And the scathing epilogue is worth the price of admission alone.

This is my second time reading Audrey Szasz, the first being her wonderful novella Invisibility: A Manifesto, also published by Amphetamine Sulphate. Needless to say, she’s 2 for 2 with me, and now I need to track down everything. (Here we go again…)

Highly recommended.

[Ben Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meet our host Tamara, lost and abandoned, wandering the wards of her local war-torn Children's Home while subject to the malign attentions of its Director and his shameless companion the Doctor. Zealous Immaculate tells her tale and it all makes for a hilarious, radically uncomfortable read.

[Danielle Chelosky · Rating 5 out of 5]

“we’re all allegedly mortal, but in a single moment, we inhabit the infinity of a stolen kiss, a nanosecond in the ocean of temporality —and I’m back there, staring at you, feeling like I’m in some kind of heaven”

[Jake Beka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Welp, this book destroyed me. Amphetamine Sulphate Press has yet to let me down, and I think, and this is a bold statement considering all of their books are masterpieces, that this one is their masterpiece. This book pummels the reader with violence, and it almost got to me. The amount of times my face contorted into shapes I didn’t know it could shift into when reading this book were boundless. Seemingly endless. But most importantly, the violence found in Audrey’s book is significant, it isn’t just violence and abuse for their own sakes; it is used so powerfully. This book really reminded me of Dennis Cooper’s work, particularly his masterpiece, Try. This is not an easy book to read, but it’s important. I remember as a kid watching this VICE documentary with my mum about the drug krokidile in Russia and Eastern Europe and it just made my skin crawl, and this book gave me the same feeling and immediately brought me back to that moment as a kid.

[Ben Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

“- until her - then it was beyond names or - no boundary or - just - disintegration -“

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This exceptional novel reminds me of, in many ways, of Paul Dilsaver’s NURTZ, NURTZ!. Dark as anthrocite & chock full o’ laughs. A total delight.

[Zack Long · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this one. Have respect for the use of language and the experimentation. But it was all in service of an effervescent nothing.

[dom]

ripping large chunks of flesh out of my head and showing them to me saying “look at this! what do you see!” and all i see is large chunks of flesh and it makes my head hurt. a million screaming children become a million quiet adults who do terrible things that are not their fault. this will stay with me for the rest of my life.

[Matt Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book of the year for 2022.

[womp womp oemp oemp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zealous immaculate

I mean . I mean

I give three stars and yet I would tell people to read this definitely more than NOT to read this. like a read it read it’s . I think it’s a good book , my rating is not in its content , I also at the same time would not recommend it to anyone- this is not a book for creative writing classes, for friends even, but perhaps one of those awfully small nyc house parties where it was mentioned off handedly, shyly, and then you would talk about it for hours — I guess that’s cult—and it’s proud of that, well maybe not proud, but it is, it is not, it is dark and brutal this book. It is catharsis through repetition which the book states itself, and the moments of fantasy violence or fantasy life are rewarded, 4th wall breaks that work sometimes and other times don’t, the imagery at times is so inventive and charged oh my god, the prose is amazing as kernels and as a whole wall, how did you think to combine that, it could have only happened in a jumbled sense stream of conscious bits the way it is written, which I was able to slip in and out of in bouts, at times I fell in and achieved this glossy eyed experience , like the narrator almost, ephemera, other times it was too loose to hold on to, or maybe because I kept reading this as I was falling asleep, which added and subtracted, and the abstraction I like , some of the grounding I actually took me out of it, tho I think the grounding was needed tbh, I dunno, some of the stream of conscious prose 4th wall break grounding moments felt smart, not trying to be smart necessarily, but smart. i dunno. The author doesn’t care these thoughts r for me to try to pin something down, I guess like the book is . Good book tho. Easier to read than the master and margarita .

[Sasha Antonakakis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of the abject if I've ever seen it. The loose structure and questionable linearity forced me into a weird head space when I was reading, but it made those moments of illumination all the more satisfying. Those moments that clarify or push the more literal sense of the plot forward, that shed light onto another dimension of the story, Tamara, or Tamara's psyche are deeply affecting. I'll need more time to think the novel over, but it was a horrifically beautiful work. The last few sentences on the last page cut right through me in a way few other words put to page have done. Szasz is masterful.

"my nose begins to bleed - I don't want to rot away - I dug a hole in the ground and whispered into it all I had seen - but a bed of black roses grew there and revealed all my secrets to the world"

[bimbo · Rating 5 out of 5]

trigger warning for pretty much everything.
so fucking good

[Chanel Chapters · Rating 1 out of 5]

On page violence against kids - trauma porn pedo stuff

[Lilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jesus fucking Christ.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brutal and relentless. Some incredibly fucked up disturbing scenes. Audrey's prose is impossible to look away from. A really good transgressive read