The Zero and the One

January 16, 2017
It isn’t a spoiler to reveal that one of the protagonists of this deliciously gothic debut—Zach—commits suicide, nor that he has help from Owen, a bookish type he befriends during a study abroad program at Oxford. But what keeps the pages turning is the deliberately paced disclosure of how Zach’s original plan for a suicide pact goes horribly awry. Or, does it? The first chapter finds Owen on his way to New York for Zach’s funeral. Subsequent sections alternate between Owen’s getting to know Zach’s well-off family—especially his fiercely magnetic and mysterious twin sister, Vera—during his weeklong stay in the city and flashbacks to Zach and Owen’s burgeoning bond over existential philosophy, wooing classmates Tori and Claire, and flouting snooty Oxford tradition. Both threads are skillfully plotted and equally intriguing, especially when Vera and the secrets she’s hiding take center stage. The novel’s trick is that none of the characters are especially in the know at any given point—each has a blind spot. Though astute readers might see the ending coming, its over-the-top intensity and sheer depravity still register quite an impact. It’s also a testament to Ruby’s powers of persuasion that questions remain even after the circumstances surrounding Zach’s death are finally unmasked. Who was really at fault? Was it—and what happened afterward—inevitable? An undeniably propulsive read.

January 1, 2017
A young man replaces the intensity of loneliness with the intensity of dear friendship to find it can be just as dark.Moving back and forth in time between Owen's present at his best friend Zach's funeral in New York City and their past together at Oxford, this novel escalates to a dramatic conclusion. Owen is a thoughtful and intelligent boy from a working-class British background, the first in his family to go to university and an outcast among his peers; Zach is a wealthy American boy on his year abroad, brilliant and impassioned, with a reckless approach to life. Both are philosophy students, driven to ascertain "Why is life worth living," and both feel immediate kinship with one another. From Zach, Owen learns to be less inhibited, learns how to interact with women, learns that "you can get away with anything, no matter how daft, if you can do it without flinching." Together they have eye-opening bonding experiences. What begins as jocular harmony becomes disturbing, however, as Zach pushes Owen to his limits, finally reaching one with dire consequences. Inspired by a book of German philosophy (excerpts of which open every chapter of this novel, nodding toward what follows), the boys enter into a suicide pact. Zach's reasoning is ostensibly moral, metaphysical, an attempt to circumvent nature and fate, to have control and freedom above all else, to become God. But the role of his twin sister, Vera, and their complex and ardent relationship, may be more influential than Zach is willing to admit to Owen. This Owen learns when the pact backfires and he's left alone to navigate through the murky story that comes to light. The writing, like the characters, is smart and engrossing. Even knowing what's to come makes the shock no less breathtaking. A potent tale of the pull people have upon one another.

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February 1, 2017
Ruby's debut novel follows Oxford sophomore Owen Whiting as he pieces together the death of his closest friend, a visiting student from New York City, Zachary Foedern. Zach opens the door to a racier existence for shy, quiet Owen, taking him to parties and introducing him to women and drugs. Owen's struggle to understand Zach's possible suicide leads him across the pond for an Upper East Side funeral. There, Owen meets Vera, Zach's enchanting twin sister, who holds a dark secret about the final year of her brother's life. Though the tone suggests a Patricia Highsmithian midcentury setting, characters receive e-mail and the first incarnations of text messages, placing the story in year 2001. The sense of time (and doom) is heightened by late-summer breakfast dates at Windows on the World, the famous restaurant on top of the World Trade Center. Told in alternating chapters between the time before and after Zach's violent demise, The Zero and the One is a fast-paced, philosophical meditation on what qualifies as the worst crime one can commit.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)