[Review] Size Zero: Visage #1
Once, when I was younger, I got a couple calls from a modeling agency in my hometown called PMS. I didn’t take them up on it, I thought it was a little strange. Came out of nowhere. Still, even though I had declined the offer it felt nice to have some place that supposedly recruited beautiful girls to tell me, a 13-year-old with pretty heavy self-esteem issues, that I was worthy of being considered for such a job. But, to be honest, I always kind of feared it would be like the modeling world of Abigail Mangin’s Size Zero.
Size Zero is horrifically comic satire at its best. I knew from page one that I was reading something intended to put the reader on edge. Parents desperate for money sell their children to men. Pack them a bag and send them off, never to return. The girls are sold dreams of fashion modeling and travel beyond their wildest dreams. Then, they’re promptly thrust into the high stakes world of high fashion. When the childhood friend of a prominent designer’s son goes missing and turns up as a skin suit on the runway years later, he decides to reenter the world he’d abandoned for monastic life and track down her murderer.
Abigail Mangin is a craftsman of pitch black humor. I found myself laughing at almost every page, even as I was disgusted by her vivid imagery of the modeling world’s underbelly. She knows how to skewer and twist those parts of society we’d rather not think about and turn them to the light. A not-so-distant future of high-tech high fashion and all the things about the elite world we don’t want to believe are happening, the world of Size Zero is sharply crafted and unforgiving. There is no mercy here, even as you laugh your way down. Its dark, sensual, vicious prose slides across the page like oil and bites.
I didn’t originally realize it was first in a series. It twists back on itself so effectively I wasn’t sure where it had left to go. Nevertheless, I’d follow Abigail Mangin into the depths of Hades if she guided. I can’t wait to see where this elite, morally complex, privileged beasts of humanity go next.
I would like to thank NetGalley, Visage Media, and Abigail Mangin for the opportunity to read an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
