Madame Zero

Hall’s second collection of short stories is a disquieting demonstration of the power of the form, in which “you may never get to the bottom of something. You might end up staring over a precipice,” as do a couple and their friend in “Wilderness” when they attempt to cross a dangerous bridge over an abyss that is as symbolically charged as it is real. Two other stories, “Later His Ghost” and “One in Four,” take place in the kind of altered or threatened landscapes for which Hall is celebrated—the first in a dystopian future in which freezing temperatures and relentless winds have destroyed civilized life, the other in an era of a superbug that is devastating the population. In “Mrs. Fox,” a man chronicles his wife’s transformation into a fox. A woman’s chance encounter with a former lover in “Luxury Hour” demonstrates the writer’s penchant for unremitting melancholy, and “Evie,” an exploration of a woman’s escalating sexual desire, goes to the grim heart of human nature. These unnerving stories hover over unspoken truths; in “Goodnight Nobody,” the message is so deeply shrouded as to be indecipherable. Hall, whose fiction is known for its sense of place (specifically the countryside of her native Cumbria), has set herself a challenge, searching for meaning in other avenues. The results are challenging and thought-provoking. (July)