Name: Mislaid
ISBN: 9780008157814

Nell Zink

‘Nell Zink is 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.’ Jonathan Franzen

Mislaid

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 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—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.

A Novel

Lindy

My local library put Mislaid on a Pride Month reading list. It felt like a dare, like the librarians were saying that Nell Zink would take the total clusterfuck of the premise and somehow pull it off.

She didn't. In fact, it was terrible in even more ways than I feared it probably would be, so I guess my expectations were exceeded. I hated Invisible Monsters too and think it's an abject failure of satire, but at least with that book I could usually figure out what Palahniuk thinks he's getting at thanks to the style and form. Despite some striking similarities, with Mislaid, I'm just kind of left wondering how straight Zink is playing it. Is Zink is a Martian whose total exposure to human culture has been through Dr. Phil and an undergraduate philosophy student's tumblr?

And the sad thing is that I can totally see how Mislaid has raked up some critical acclaim: Don't you see how it's all about challenging the socially-constructed identity categories? It's the absolute queerest. And queerness, as we all know, is so chic right now. You can avoid criticism for not writing about gay or black people while at the same time still not writing about gay or black people.

Some small tidbits of fuckery I have to share, since I did read the whole damn thing:(view spoiler)[
- "[Peggy] stood in front of the full-length mirror in the ladies’ dressing room at the Jefferson Hotel in her slip and silk stockings and felt an almost overwhelming need to masturbate." (6%)  See what I was saying about Invisible Monsters?
-  "They expected salad with quixotic greens like watercress and arugula and compared pasta to Treblinka."  (40%) How exactly can salad greens be quixotic?
- "Meg said. “It’s like people used to just get it on, but modern science started sorting us into categories. So you get assigned this identity, like ‘straight woman,’ meaning woman who likes men. Except ninety-nine guys out of a hundred, if they touched you, you’d scream." (47%) It's fascinating to me how Meg's "butchering of Foucault" here is identical to an awful article once written by a well-known internet academic. Perhaps Zink also saw the article.
- "Her own smooth legs drove her wild with lust." (68%) During this scene, Peggy reminisces about the debutante dress scene quoted above, comes to the revelation that she's not a butch as she always thought but a femme!
- “'I underestimated you,' he said, as soon as they were alone together at a gay (the owner, not the patrons; it’s important to realize that progress isn’t when minorities come out of the closet—generally speaking, black people have been out of the closet since time immemorial—but when they can make money selling vital necessities, not cream soda and carrot cake) bakery on Cary Street in Richmond." (96%). What.
 (hide spoiler)]

Emily Perkovich

I think I must give in and admit Nell Zink is not for me. With Doxology I thought it was my attention span that was the problem, but this wasn’t long and I had all the same feelings of the story being interesting but feeling interminable. Areas of non-necessity drag while altogether intriguing points are rushed. And everything leftist screams shouting for the sake of shouting. Something about this “satire on racism and gender” felt very racist and pigeon holing and I just can’t abide by it. Being me I went and read an interview to try to understand her, and was instead confused by comments saying that she doesn’t care about folks being more left than her because the right runs the media while simultaneously claiming she’s extremely liberal and wishes she were queer. I’m lost. I’m confused. And I’m selling the other titles of hers that I own. Maybe someone else will love them.

Jeannette Ordas

Ho, ho! This is a smarty pants enjoyable fun read. The writing is excellent and there are many fun turns of phrase, but is it a dig that it's almost too clever? Regardless, a short fun summer read. 3.5 stars.

Lisa Miller

A young woman in college in the American South in the 1960's has an affair with her English professor. He is experienced - she is not. She gets pregnant so they get married and end up with two kids. Sounds like a cliche, sounds normal, except both of them are gay. Two unhappy people in an unhappy marriage with two kids this book follows what happens to this family.

I liked reading this book hence the three stars. It was fast paced and I loved the setting. The story and characters were interesting and 'zany'. But the story and characters also lacked depth, it felt flat like it was skimming the surface. I really disliked the resolution at the end and thinking about it my enjoyment of the book was on a downward slide from the the middle of the book when it started to focus on kids and the parents were sidelined.

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.

Leafling

[3.5, but rounded up]

Mislaid is a complicated novel, but I was so delighted to see that it had more of a structured narrative than The Wallcreeper did. I don't even know how to describe it. A gay professor and a lesbian student bone a lot, get married, have two kids, then the wife runs away, taking her little girl with her. To hide from her husband, Peggy/Meg and her daughter take up the identities of two deceased African Americans and live in poverty passing as black despite being very white. Shenanigans ensue, but like in the most intellectual sense.

The characters are all ridiculous, the plot is ridiculous, but it is soooo smart and funny. Zink does not hold back in her social commentary, and I'm glad she goes so boldly into the absurd while looking at identity. Having read The Wallcreeper, which was a bit of a narrative clusterfuck, I was pretty satisfied with the ending of her second novel. Granted, when you look back at it once you're done, you'll wonder why certain events and characters were included at all. Overall, though, it was pretty entertaining and it definitely makes you think. 

Full review: Outlandish Lit - 3 Books About People Who Aren't What They Seem

Gigi V

Courtney

Ashley Johnson

'Nell Zink is 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.' Jonathan Franzen

Mislaid

Reviews

Highlights