Two generations of an American family come of age - one before 9/11, one after - in this moving and original novel from the "intellectually restless, uniquely funny" (New York Times Book Review) mind of Nell Zink
Pam, Daniel, and Joe might be the worst punk band on the Lower East Side. Struggling to scrape together enough cash and musical talent to make it, they are waylaid by surprising arrivals - a daughter for Pam and Daniel, a solo hit single for Joe. As the '90s wane, the three friends share in one another's successes, working together to elevate Joe's superstardom and raise baby Flora.
On September 11, 2001, the city's unfathomable devastation coincides with a shattering personal loss for the trio. In the aftermath, Flora comes of age, navigating a charged political landscape and discovering a love of the natural world. Joining the ranks of those fighting for ecological conservation, Flora works to bridge the wide gap between powerful strategists and ordinary Americans, becoming entangled ever more intimately with her fellow activists along the way. And when the country faces an astonishing new threat, Flora's family will have no choice but to look to the past - both to examine wounds that have never healed, and to rediscover strengths they have long forgotten.
At once an elegiac takedown of today's political climate and a touching invocation of humanity's goodness, Doxology offers daring revelations about America's past and possible future that could only come from Nell Zink, one of the sharpest novelists of our time.
The "wonderfully talented" (Dwight Garner, New York Times) author of Mislaid returns with a fierce and audaciously funny novel of families—both the ones we’re born into and the ones we create—a story of obsession, idealism, and ownership, centered around a young woman who inherits her bohemian late father's childhood home.
Recent business school graduate Penny Baker has rebelled against her family her whole life—by being the conventional one. Her mother, Amalia, was a member of a South American tribe called the Kogi; her much older father, Norm, long ago attained cult-like deity status among a certain cohort of aging hippies while operating a psychedelic "healing center." And she’s never felt particularly close to her much older half-brothers from Norm’s previous marriage—one wickedly charming and obscenely rich (but mostly just wicked), one a photographer on a distant tropical island.
But all that changes when her father dies, and Penny inherits his childhood home in New Jersey. She goes to investigate the property and finds it not overgrown and abandoned, but rather occupied by a group of friendly anarchist squatters whom she finds unexpectedly charming, and who have renamed the property "Nicotine." The Nicotine residents (united in defense of smokers’ rights) possess the type of passion and fervor Penny feels she’s desperately lacking, and the other squatter houses in the neighborhood provide a sense of community she has never felt before. She soon moves into a nearby residence, becoming enmeshed in the political fervor and commitment of her fellow squatters.
As the Baker family’s lives begin to converge around the fate of the house now called Nicotine, Penny grows ever bolder and more desperate to protect it—and its residents—until a fateful night when a reckless confrontation between her old family and her new one changes everything.
Nell Zink exquisitely captures the clash between Baby-Boomer idealism and Millennial pragmatism, between the have-nots and want-mores, in a riotous yet tender novel that brilliantly encapsulates our time.
From the much acclaimed author of MISLAID and THE WALLCREEPER, a fierce and audaciously funny novel of families-both the ones we're born into and the ones we create-a story of obsession, idealism, and ownership, centered around a young woman who inherits her bohemian late father's childhood home.
"She wills her body to be equally wraithlike. Not sodden, not heavy, not dead, but filled with crackling, electric life, like a stale Marlboro on fire."
Unemployed business major, Penny, has rebelled against her family her whole life - by being the conventional one. Her mother was a member of a South American tribe; her father was a Jewish Shamanist with a psychedelic 'healing centre'. But everything changes when her father dies and Penny inherits his childhood home. Left weightless and unmoored after being the only member of her family with time for her dying father, Penny then finds his property occupied by a group of squatters, united in defence of smokers' rights - and herself unexpectedly besotted with them, particularly Rob, the hot bicycle-and-tobacco activist.
Totally addictive and dangerously good, 'Nicotine' is a fiercely funny novel in which passion is politics and nonviolence is the opposite of surrender.
'Heady and rambunctious ... Wake up, this book says: in its plot lines, in its humour, in its philosophical underpinnings and political agenda. I'll pay it the highest compliment it knows - this book is a wild thing.' New York Times Book ReviewInterlaken, Berne, 21st century. Several things happen after the car hits the rock. Tiff ceases to be pregnant. Stephen captures, like, the most wonderful bird - fleet, stealthy, and beautiful - a real "lifer". And the wallcreeper, the wallcreeper says "twee".The Wallcreeper is nothing more than a portrait of marriage, complete with all its requisite highs and lows: drugs, dubstep, small chores, anal sex, eco-terrorism, birding, breeding and feeding.
A sharply observed, mordantly funny, and startlingly original debut from an exciting, unconventional new voice, about the making and unmaking of the American family that lays bare all of our assumptions about race and racism, sexuality and desire.
