Doxology

June 3, 2019
Beginning in the early days of the 1990s and moving through the years to the 2016 election, Zink’s solid fourth novel (after Nicotine) follows the exploits of the members of a short-lived New York City punk band. Pam and Daniel have a daughter, Flora, before their careers can even begin to take off; meanwhile, Joe, the singer, has a breakthrough when he writes an unexpected hit single. As his fame grows, Pam and Daniel focus on raising Flora. On 9/11, everything changes, not just because of the attacks, but also because of an unexpected death that occurs on the same day. The second half of the book focuses more on Flora’s coming-of-age as she, among other things, becomes a campaign staffer for Jill Stein. As time passes, Zink infuses the novel with as many period details as possible (for instance, “bricklike cell phones”), but the repeated intrusion of the narrator explaining the political and cultural developments during the last 30 years becomes a bit overbearing and, worse, mostly unnecessary. Still, Zink’s gifts for characterization and richly evoked periods and places are on display throughout. Zink’s longest novel is her most ambitious and perhaps her most effective.

July 1, 2019

A rebellious girl from an upper-middle-class Washington, DC, family and the son of Evangelical Christians from rural Wisconsin meet in New York's underground music scene in the early 1990s. While trying to start a record label and promote the career of eccentric musician Joe Harris, Pam becomes pregnant, and she and Daniel marry and live in a small apartment on the Lower East Side with their daughter, Flora. Following 9/11, they temporarily flee New York, and Flora grows up moving between her grandparents' stable DC home and her parents' Bohemian existence. We follow Flora into the present day as her concern for the environment leads her first to pursue a career in soil chemistry and then to work as a Green Party campaign staffer during the national 2016 election. VERDICT Here, Zink (Mislaid) seems to follow her characters where they want to go rather than imposing an orchestrated plot on them. Thus, what starts as a gritty "sex, drugs, and rock and roll" novel turns into a family drama about generational conflict, then a story about our current sociopolitical moment. For these engaging characters, the attempt to find meaning and purpose is often detoured when the universe has other plans. [See Prepub Alert, 2/18/19/.]--Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2019
The author of Nicotine (2016) and Mislaid (2015) takes readers from CBGB to Washington, D.C. In 1986, when life at home in the suburbs becomes too stifling, Pam gets on a bus and heads for New York. She's one-half of a truly terrible band when she meets Joe. Her new friend waits tables at a diner and plays bass. Daniel is as obsessed with obscure music as Pam and Joe, but he's more interested in producing than playing. The threesome remains an odd but fully functional unit even after Daniel and Pam start having sex and fall in love, even after Pam has a baby, even after Joe becomes an indie darling. There is no shortage of fiction chronicling young people finding themselves through the punk scene on the Lower East Side, but Zink's version of this coming-of-age tale is distinctive because her superpower as an author is crafting weirdos and misfits without being excessively charmed by her creations. Pam and Daniel are both flawed and capable of recognizing their flaws. Joe is guileless and incapable of self-analysis, which makes him both intensely lovable and totally eager to play the archetypal rock star. The bonds among this chosen family are beginning to strain when 9/11 happens. After this turning point, the narrative focus begins to shift to Pam and Daniel's daughter and widen to take in more of the political landscape. Flora's passion for the environment leads her to a position with Jill Stein's campaign. There's something refreshing about Zink's willingness to name names. When she writes about the last presidential election, she doesn't create a character who looks a lot like Donald Trump; she writes about Donald Trump. At the same time, it's an open question how much people who are bombarded by news about Donald Trump all day, every day, want to see his name in a novel. How many people still angry and despondent over 2016 want to relive it through the eyes of a Green Party staffer? More critically, fiction set behind the scenes in Washington doesn't feel all that compelling when everyone in the real Washington--from politicians to speechwriters to low-level staffers--has an Instagram account. A timely, ambitious, and uneven effort from an excellent contemporary writer.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2019
Zink's (Nicotine, 2016) fourth novel is an ambitious family history set primarily in New York City and Washington, DC, that spans the early 1990s to just after the 2016 election. New York City punk rockers Pam and Joe form a terrible, fleeting band with aspiring music producer Daniel, a Midwest transplant. Pam and Daniel are quickly sidetracked by the unexpected arrival of their daughter, Flora, whom Joe babysits while rising to inexplicable major indie music success as a solo artist. The events of 9/11 serve as an unofficial break in the story, with the second half focusing primarily on Flora's coming-of-age and expanding the scope of the story to include the political landscape as Flora becomes a Green Party activist working on Jill Stein's campaign. Zink's characters are marvelously relatable, instantly recognizable to readers who lived through the times she writes about as they move through richly described settings. Zink's distinctively offbeat sensibility and wit soften the frequently devastating circumstances in which her characters find themselves. A strong effort by an excellent writer of quirky contemporary fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)