Synopses & Reviews
From the inimitable and utterly unconventional voice of Nell Zink comes a wickedly humorous and sharply observed novel that exposes all of our assumptions about race and racism, sexuality and desire, through the making and unmaking of one American family.
In 1960s Virginia, college freshman and ingenue Peggy falls for professor and poet Lee, and what begins as an ill-advised affair results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. Mismatched from the start—she's a lesbian; he's gay—Peggy eventually finds herself in crisis and runs away with their daughter, leaving their son behind.
Estranged from the rest of the family, Peggy and her daughter adopt African American identities and live in near poverty to escape detection. Meanwhile, Lee and his son carry on, enjoying all the social privileges their gender, class, and whiteness afford them. Eventually the long-lost siblings meet, setting off a series of misunderstandings that culminate in a darkly comedic finale worthy of Shakespeare.
With an arch sense of humor and a witty satirical eye, Nell Zink upends the foundational categories of American life—race, class, gender, and sexuality—in a novel that is at once daring, envelope-pushing, and utterly hilarious, all the while tracing how a mother, daughter, father, and son figure out what it means to belong.
Review
Praise for The Wallcreeper:“[The Wallcreeper] a weird, funny, sad, and sharp story of growing up . . . Zink masterfully captures the slippery nature of human intimacy . . . This is the introduction of an exciting new voice.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Review
“A deceptively slim epic of family life that rivals a Greek tragedy in drama and wisdom…deftly handles race, sexuality, and coming of age. Zinks insight is beautifully braided into understated prose that never lets the tension subside… it all points to Zinks masterly subtlety and depth.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Review
“Zinks capacity for inventions is immense… [Mislaid] zips along with a giddy, lunatic momentum. Its perverse wackiness is irresistible; unlike just about everything engineered to make you laugh out loud, Zinks novel actually does, over and over again… She knows how to let her freak flag fly.” BookForum
Review
“Crafting a zany story with outlandish characters doing the unexpected, Zink successfully creates a comedy of errors offering a happy ending for an impossible situation.” Library Journal
Review
“Zinks energy pulses in narration. [She] is original, unsentimental, erudite, and something of a naturalist. Her vocabulary is tremendous [and] her sentences are penetrating and agile.” Harper's Magazine
Review
“[Zink] further proves her narrative chops as she spins a darkly satirical story … Zinks frankness on topics like gender, racial, socioeconomic, and sexual identity politics is refreshing and bold, but it is her strong writing and lucid sentences which truly reel readers in-and keep them there.” L Magazine
Review
The bracing disconnect between sly, low-affect prose and Gothic strangeness recalls Flannery OConnor and Jean Stafford--mid-century women you could imagine crossing paths with Peggy and shuddering.” Vulture
Review
“[Zink] makes her big publishing debut with with this unconventional but ultimately brilliant novel that takes family, race, and the how decisions you make could resonate for years to come.” Men & #8217;s Journal
Review
“A startlingly original novel about the dissolution of an eccentric American family.” Harper's Bazaar
Review
“Nell Zinks The Wallcreeper was the most impressive debut of 2014…her second novel, the hilarious and genius Mislaid, which restores a kind of Whitmania to American fiction, by which I mean that it convincingly covers race, class, gender, and sexuality in the briefest of spaces with the sharpest of minds..” Flavorwire
Review
“A writer of extraordinary talent and range. Her work insistently raises the possibility that the world is larger and stranger than the world you think you know. You might not want to believe this, but her sentences and stories are so strong and convincing that youll have no choice.” Jonathan Franzen
Review
A high comedy of racial identity...Zink is a comic writer par excellence...Both that voice and the stories Zink tells are so startling, so seemingly without antecedent, that she would seem like an outsider artist, if she did not betray so much casual erudition.” New Yorker
Review
“Mislaid is a sprawling multi-generational saga of a Southern family that is as absurd and hilarious as it is tragic and seeing.” VanityFair.com
Review
“The title of Nell Zinks new novel is just the first wry, indecorous joke in this zany-brainy story...Zink writes with such faux innocence that her cracks about sexuality and race detonate only after she has riffed off to the next unlikely incident.” Washington Post
Review
“Mislaids pathos is charmingly funny, and a sentimental streak softens the sarcasm... captivates from the very first page... Comic, sympathetic, heartbreaking and outrageous, Mislaid is a wonderful, raucous book.” Shelf Awareness
Review
“A comedic finale worthy of Shakespeare.” Paste
Review
“Theres nothing derivative about Nell Zinks hip, hilarious and unexpectedly moving novel Mislaid… Zink has a genius for making the bizarre seem natural… makes for one of the most satisfying happy endings in recent fiction.” Wall Street Journal
Review
“Her fiction presents characters who act just ludicrously enough to be human.” San Francisco Chronicle
Review
“Perhaps most impressive about ... Mislaid is the authors seemingly endless capacity for wit…Zink peppers her story with clever one-liners and quick exchanges….Its smart, sharp prose that invests the reader in the story. Electric Literature
Review
“Ms. Zink is a wonderfully talented writer….The thrilling early sections of Mislaid find Ms. Zink writing on a higher plane. Her prose is richer, earthier, more emotionally complex.” Dwight Garner, the New York Times
Review
“Zinks deadpan wit is matched by an ethical deadpan… [She] isnt a moralist. She creates fictional worlds beyond the bounds of the going taboos, then pushes those bounds to the logical extremes. … Mislaid uses southern racism as fuel for devious comic flights.” New York magazine
Review
“Zinks life story and her fairy-tale path to publication have nothing on the antic sparks of her prose, her freewheeling extra-canonical allusiveness, her swings from the register of love to a mode of contempt… ” New York magazine
Review
“Zink writes with energetic, ecstatic abandon… delves fearlessly and credibly into race and gender issues, onloading on old Virginia in just-right didactic bursts. Zink develops peculiar and wonderful characters, and she writes situational humor… with a deftness and ease it took John Irving twice as many books to master.” Paste
Review
“Looking for a brainy yet breezy novel that addresses gender, race, and class issues with levity and has a happy ending? Try Nell Zinks Mislaid… a funny, entertaining, lightweight highbrow novel perhaps best read in a single afternoon under a beach umbrella.” New York Journal of Books
Review
A lesbian in the conservative South during the mid-1960s, Peggy falls under the spell of Lee, a gay aristocratic poet, in Zinks zany farce. The comedy of errors cunningly exposes our deep-seated prejudices about race and desire.” O, the Oprah Magazine
Synopsis
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2015 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
A sharply observed, mordantly funny, and startlingly original novel from an exciting, unconventional new voice--the author of the acclaimed The Wallcreeper--about the making and unmaking of the American family that lays bare all of our assumptions about race and racism, sexuality and desire.
Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ing nue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The two are mismatched from the start--she's a lesbian, he's gay--but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.
Worried that Lee will have her committed for her erratic behavior, Peggy goes underground, adopting an African American persona for her and her daughter. They squat in a house in an African-American settlement, eventually moving to a housing project where no one questions their true racial identities. As Peggy and Lee's children grow up, they must contend with diverse emotional issues: Byrdie deals with his father's compulsive honesty; while Karen struggles with her mother's lies--she knows neither her real age, nor that she is "white," nor that she has any other family.
Years later, a minority scholarship lands Karen at the University of Virginia, where Byrdie is in his senior year. Eventually the long lost siblings will meet, setting off a series of misunderstandings and culminating in a comedic finale worthy of Shakespeare.
--Publishers Weekly
(starred review)Synopsis
A sharply observed, mordantly funny, and startlingly original novel from an exciting, unconventional new voice—the author of the acclaimed
The Wallcreeper—about the making and unmaking of the American family that lays bare all of our assumptions about race and racism, sexuality and desire.
Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The two are mismatched from the start—shes a lesbian, hes gay—but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.
Worried that Lee will have her committed for her erratic behavior, Peggy goes underground, adopting an African American persona for her and her daughter. They squat in a house in an African-American settlement, eventually moving to a housing project where no one questions their true racial identities. As Peggy and Lees children grow up, they must contend with diverse emotional issues: Byrdie deals with his fathers compulsive honesty; while Karen struggles with her mothers lies—she knows neither her real age, nor that she is “white,” nor that she has any other family.
Years later, a minority scholarship lands Karen at the University of Virginia, where Byrdie is in his senior year. Eventually the long lost siblings will meet, setting off a series of misunderstandings and culminating in a comedic finale worthy of Shakespeare.
About the Author
Nell Zink grew up in rural Virginia. She has worked in a variety of trades, including masonry and technical writing. In the early 1990s, she edited an indie rock fanzine. Her writing has also appeared in n+1. Her debut novel, The Wallcreeper, was published in 2014. She lives near Berlin, Germany.