Sister Zero

In Sister Zero, a woman who never wantedchildren suddenly becomes a mother to her nine-year-old nephew after her sistercommits suicide at age 34. Fifteen years later, the boy will also kill himselfand in almost exactly the same manner.

Sister Zero is narrated through short prose sections and snippets of “advice” fromMister Ed (of the old television show), while Nance Van Winckel exhumes thesisters’ shared childhood for missed clues, interrogates memory’s accuracy, andinteracts with a mother who’s disappearing into late-stage Alzheimer’s.

As the shock of these deathsripples out, the book progresses in swift strokes between the tough and tender,often staring stony-eyed at a terrifying moment, then jumping forward orbackward in time to a moment of quiet humor.

Each chapter begins with an alteredpage from the Official Guide to the 1964 World’s Fair: collages Van Winckelmade as testaments to that touchstone event in New York when the sisters werechildren, a time she realized how huge the world was, how vastly differentother countries and cultures were from her own. The Fair was all about thefuture, its bright and happy promises. She and her now-dead sister rode a ridecalled “tunnel to the future.” The sister was scared; our narrator was not.