Unimaginable Zero Summer: A Novel

By Leslie Stella

Perhaps you too have experienced the nausea brought on by the arrival of an invitation to a high school reunion. Bookstore clerk and culture junker Verity Presti will soon attend her fifteenth reunion... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400081025
• ISBN13: 9781400081028
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 5.2" x 0.6" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

I want more!!!

I absolutely LOVED this book. I am not kidding when I say I laughed out loud! It was clever and quirky without trying too hard to be. The idea that a shaman would use Glade Plug-ins in place of incense because it gives his mother a headache!! I am going to start Leslie Stella's book Fat Bald Jeff tonight!!

A great summer read in a suburban wasteland

The story revolves around a bunch of 30-somethings in Chicago preparing for a high school reunion at Downers Grove South High School. You may have heard of Leslie's first two books - the subvert-from-within classic debut Fat Bald Jeff, and her hilarious tribute to lowering the upper class by bringing a bit of Bridgeport to the Gold Coast- The Easy Hour. I think with UZS, Stella really shows how much she honed her craft. Her dialogue has always been "laugh out loud" funny, and it is here as well, but the sentences are even tighter. She tells a great story at a perfect pace. In UZS, she creates her most interesting characters to date. A lot of her content is familiar stuff, as she weaves music and pop culture into Chicago area settings. Among the long forgotten bands she mentions are the Psychedelic Furs, Ulravox, the Young Fresh Fellows, the Replacements... Here's a sample of some of the commentary, out of context of course, from one of the book's best characters, a bitter Vietnam vet bookstore clerk named Bob: On Dr. Phil: "I'd like to kick that mustache into the back of his skull." On 'Chicken Soup For the Soul': "I'd like to take a pot of boiling chicken soup and shove it down his *** throat." Another character, Charlie, taking about his haunted apartment in Rogers Park: "Did you ever think a three-flat in Rogers Park would be the afterlife? How depressing. But I guess its better than haunting the south side. Can you imagine spending eternity in Bridgeport? Your soul would be floating around 35th street thinking 'Oh my God! I've been sent to hell." Some more great quotes: "I'm not broke just because I'm Polish and grew up in Westmont." "Are you getting 'mommy urges'?" "Does craving alchohol count?" "...he found he could not forgive her for liking the Dave Matthews Band." "I'm not ready for the Cubs and Red Sox to face off in the World Series. I have a lot of things I want to do before toads rain upon the land and the earth spins into the sun." "She had not drunk like this in years. Her stockpile of 'I was so wasted' stories remained archived and smoldering, a black box recording retrived from a wreckage of shame." "Downers Grove may suck, but its almost like home to me." Highly recommended!

Hilarious assortment of geeks and pretentious yuppies!

I've been a fan of Leslie Stella since Fat Bald Jeff, with her believable, well-written oddballs (except maybe not so odd- they are like the dork in you and me!) The story is basically this:an impending high school reunion with a mid-30's crowd, full of unresolved issues in the group. The heroine, Verity, is a bookstore clerk with a nice boyfriend stuck with the name of Charlie Brown. She feels like a failure. After all, what has she really done with her life, except become an excellent thrift shopper with a keen eye for cool? Her boyfriend lives with his parents and the ghost of a murdered (but sartorially savvy) tenant with an inexplicable attraction to Mrs. Brown's meatloaf. Verity and Charlie meet up with Verity's old friends and make some entertaining career changes that will make you smile. Her father and his vampire-lifestylist girfriend are gems who go through some changes of their own. She skewers character's pretensions, and then turns around and gives us something to like about them. Her books have a kind heart in disguise.

Stella kicks it up a notch

This is certainly her best book so far. While maintaining that distinctive Stella style (i.e. sarcasm and wry humor loaded into every word, but without any distasteful mocking), she's managed to ratchet it up a notch and infuse better character development and some real tension into this one. Fat Bald Jeff and The Easy Hour are pleasant warm-ups, but Unimaginable Zero Summer is the full-tilt Stella novel her fans have been slavering for. Wow! Holy crap! I was getting very anxious reading through the subtle relationship interplays-the tension was more palpable than Stella has attempted before-hoping that there wouldn't be some painful betrayal! She really twisted the knife in there, but layered it with enough honest-to-goodness sweetness that by the end you're rooting for everyone and when the "happy" ending finally does arrive, it seems appropriate and earnest (as opposed to trite and contrived, like most of 'em). Also, the constant switching of POV (another new element for Stella) worked very well, and was very smooth and effective. It helped develop the characters a LOT. Whenever I've read her other books, I'm usually sitting there grinning like an ape the whole time in amazement at how she so deftly captures the subtext of "my" life. Stella has a keen eye for the absurdity of the mundane, and the unique ability to translate it into some funny stuff, too. I haven't felt a book speaking to me so directly since High Fidelity! This book made me, a 35-yr-old, well-read and intelligent (but sort of hopelessly unambitious and bewildered) guy feel better about my own aimless existence, even elevating it to a level of acceptance I never thought possible. I am going to force my mother to read this book, just so I can stand over her shoulder as she reads the last page and say, "See? That's what I'm talking about!" Good shout-outs for Rogers Park and elotes, and a thousand other things that I'll only be able to remember when I buy a copy expressly for the purpose of highlighting stuff with yellow ink. However, one thing I recall vividly is that I burst out laughing at her description of a mobile hanging above one of the character's child's crib as "playing instrumental Phish"! Maybe some people won't even get that joke, but that's why Stella's books are so great-she peppers all her work with little nuggets of scene-specific goodness that are not necessarily broad enough for legions of Oprah followers to immediately appreciate. Her characters and uncanny ability to zero in on the fundamentals of relationships of all sorts, however, give all her work-and particularly this one, with its themes of family and the changning nature of friendship-a familiarity that resonates with almost everyone. Kudos to Stella for making her Charlie Brown character a "hero." I AM CHARLIE BROWN! And there are a LOT of us CB's out here, you know? We thank her, for at least once demonstrating that we, too, can win. I know it's absolutely premature, but I can't wait for t