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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.
Nicotine
by Nell Zink
eBook
$6.99
-
ISBN-13:
9780062441720
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication date: 10/04/2016
- Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 304
- File size: 634 KB
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One of Huffington Post’s 20 Fall 2016 Books You’ll Need for Your Bookshelf
Featured in New York Magazine’s Fall 2016 Preview
An Entertainment Weekly Fall 2016 Must-Read
Featured in LitHub’s 2016 Bookseller’s Fall Preview
Featured in The Guardian‘s Fall 2016 Books Preview: The Best American Writing
From the “wonderfully talented” (Dwight Garner, New York Times) author of Mislaid and The Wallcreeper comes a fierce and audaciously funny new novel, dazzling in its energy and ambition: a story of obsession, idealism, and ownership, centered around a young woman who inherits her bohemian 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 an Amazonian tribe called the Kogi; her much older father, Norm, long ago attained cult-like deity status among a certain group of aging hippies while operating a ‘healing center’ in New Jersey. 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 House. The residents of Nicotine House (defenders 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 Penny’s never felt before, and 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 Nicotine House, 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.
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The New York Times - Dwight Garner
Nell Zink's surname, which seems to combine the words "zing" and "sink," happens to be a nice distillation of her prose style. She's a deadpan comedian, her sentences funny yet plump with existential dread. Her novels give you that zinking feeling. Her new one is called Nicotine, and like her previous books, it's…anarchic in its plot machinations, scrambled in its themes, mostly shallow in its emotions…The strange thing is that you're never tempted to put Ms. Zink's novels aside. They contain so much backspin and topspin that you're kept alert by the leaping motion…Ms. Zink has a confident feel for the dynamics of a group house, and for the lives of young, earnest, befuddled, middle-class kids who will sacrifice a good situation in order to believe in something…[Her] voice is naturally satirical and subversive; she can't help seeing that her characters are comic and sublime at the same time.The New York Times Book Review - Elizabeth McKenzie
Nicotine is an addictive stimulant, and so is Nicotine…intellectually restless, uniquely funny and, I would argue, her best yet…Zink's narrative is propulsive, wonderfully stuffed with irreverent and absorbing banter among these characters who move in slightly off-kilter orbits, as if their wills are counterweighed by ballasts of personal history that we can only guess at…Maybe what's most bootylicious in this novel is Zink's warmhearted embrace of her subjects. With a straight face, she gives them space to do their quixotic thing. The book affirms that there's salvation to be had in connection, no matter how gnarly…The book works toward the achieving of a comic utopia, the lost kingdom of childishness. As much as one is aware of their vulnerabilities, one enjoys every minute with these obliging kooks.New York Times Book Review
Intellectually restless, uniquely funny...Propulsive, wonderfully stuffed with irreverent and absorbing banter...What’s most bootylicious in this novel is Zink’s warmhearted embrace of her subjects...One enjoys every minute with these obliging kooks....There may be some readers who want to make out with this book.Los Angeles Times
[A] wild and nervy novel. Zink is a master of rapid character development, shifting perspectives, sex scenes and plot twists. … “Nicotine” was so addictive it made me want to reach for a cigarette when I was done. Slate
Zink has instantly become one of the most unusual, refreshing voices in contemporary fiction. Her work is completely unfettered by genteel literary conventions and replete with robust storytelling...Both a satire of and a valentine to the 21st-century counterculture, Nicotine is sexy and political and hilarious.Dwight Garner
She’s a deadpan comedian, her sentences funny yet plump with existential dread...You’re never tempted to put Ms. Zink’s novels aside. They contain so much backspin and topspin that you’re kept alert by the leaping motion... Her books are sexy... I could listen to Ms. Zink’s dialogue all day.Vox
Even when Zink is being conventional, she’s exemplary. What makes her satire so exciting and so novel is the empathy of her writing... Exciting and provocative... She’s a singular figure in the literary landscape, and Nicotine is a perfect introduction to her brilliant, off-kilter world.The Millions
The author’s best work... Zink is a wordsmith’s wordsmith. She’s sharp, wry, and might be a genius.Wall Street Journal
A hilarious perversion of the rom-com…Ms. Zink’s 2015 novel Mislaid delightfully sent up racial and gender mores, and here again she has affectionate fun tweaking the pieties of her cast of businessmen, cultists and activists. …Nicotine is light reading in the best sense. Think Wodehouse for millennials.Washington Post
Zink writes some of the most comical lust between “love weasels” in contemporary fiction…[She] excels at scathing set pieces that caustically sum up places and local cultures…She gets her characters in motion, like mismatched roommates in a ramshackle house, and lets us enjoy watching them pinball around.Minneapolis Star Tribune
Zink has a sharp knack for illuminating the challenges facing American millennials circa now... [In Nicotine] you’ll find the cutting social commentary and sharply drawn characters of one of this decade’s most promising new novelists.Village Voice
Extraordinary... Get the book for its crackling prose and razor-sharp wit, but ready yourself for its blitzkrieg of startling imagery.New Republic
Undeniably excellent... Propulsive... This is Zink at her most heartfelt... Zink is an architect. She builds worlds that look a little like ours, but are wrong enough to make one think—really think, not just feel. Chicago Tribune
Smart and often very funny... Even while Zink skewers bohemian stereotypes — the affluent squatter, the chain-smoking environmentalist — she cares for her characters, imbuing them with complicated personalities, causes and sexual proclivities. Rich sensory detail, earnest dialogue and raw emotion...Absorbing, original... Belongs on your fall list.