Size Zero

Sex, scares, and satire are stitched together in Mangin’s garbled debut chiller, set in the world of high fashion. At an elite New York runway show, model Ava Germaine, a victim of human trafficking, is shoved onto the stage wearing a coat made of human skin. Suspicion for the murder of the person whose skin the coat was made of falls on Ava’s agent, the Trumpian Margaux LeClaire. When Margaux’s son, 20-something Benedictine novice Cecil, receives his missing friend Annabelle Leigh’s severed hand in the mail, he decides to investigate before taking his vows. Cecil and Ava team up to find the truth, cutting a swath through New York’s fashion world as Mangin’s shoestring plot veers wildly between satire, gore, and lectures on the abuses of the fashion industry, breathlessly depicting sexual exploitation and obscene wealth while loudly condemning both. The satire reads more like spite, with no redemption on offer for the mean-spirited, broadly drawn cast. This patchwork swipe at high fashion, wealth, and body image successfully horrifies—but for all the wrong reasons. (July)