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Summary
Summary
Named a Best Book of the Year by:
The New York Times * New York Magazine * Lit Hub * TIME * O, the Oprah Magazine * Good Housekeeping
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.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Guardian Review
Two generations of a family expose the failings of Trump's America in the novelist's frequently brilliant latest. The novels of the US writer Nell Zink tend to be thrillingly unhinged, apparently written on the fly - within a month or even a week - and buzzing with witty dialogue and zany plots. In Mislaid, written before the Rachel Dolezal affair, a white woman identifies as black to leave her gay husband; the main character of Nicotine inherits her childhood home only to end up in a three-way fling with anarchist squatters, one asexual, the other a nymphomaniac. If the wider points could sometimes go astray amid the quirkiness, Zink's new novel looks like a bid for greater heft, targeting state-of-the-nation terrain through her regular prism of an unusual domestic setup. Running from 80s New York to Trump-era Washington DC, and framed by a pair of accidental pregnancies some 20 years apart, Doxology contrasts America then and now, to the latter's disadvantage. The 80s section introduces us to the wannabe post-punk three-piece at the novel's heart: Pam, a coder, and Daniel, a proofreader, who, after the unplanned arrival of a daughter, Flora, score an unlikely top 10 single fronted by their friend Joe, who juggles the hard-partying duties of stardom with babysitting Flora when her parents are out at work. There's true tenderness in Zink's portrait of their mutual affection. Here's what a family looks like, she seems to say. Yet a third of the way into the book, Daniel, desperate to get his wife and daughter out of New York on 9/11, loses contact with Joe, who is later found dead. Not in the circumstances you might expect: although that's just what Pam and Daniel guiltily let Flora grow up believing, sowing discord in a book partly about the making and breaking of illusions. Doxology rings true with detail both glamorous and mundane, from record label talks to an A&E dash when Flora falls off a changing table. Our sense of the book's authenticity sags only when we see Flora in her ecologically conscious 20s, studying soil erosion in Ethiopia and cutting her political teeth in the run-up to the 2016 election. Zink once played in an underground band and edited an indie-rock zine; whether she's ever been to Addis Ababa or sat in on a Democrat strategy meeting, I don't know - it's irrelevant - but either way, the book's second half doesn't hit the high notes of the first. Ultimately, Flora's idealistic quest "to end economic growth" in order to save the planet is upstaged by a more traditional plot when, on the campaign trail, she ends up two-timing a pair of Democrat strategists, one middle-aged, the other in his 20s. When the outcome - expectant motherhood in uncertain circumstances - prompts comparisons with how an equivalent scenario played out for her parents, it's hard not to suspect Zink (born in 1964) feels that twentysomethings in her own generation had their heads screwed on as well as screwed up. Doxology is invigorating and intermittently brilliant. Yet as the plot grows manic, the hardboiled sass of the prose turns perfunctory; and when, late on, an apocalyptic miasma leads to little but a riff on how Fox News decides the pollution cloud is less noteworthy than an item on the optimum thickness of spaghetti, there's a sense that, for Zink, endings remain elusive.
Kirkus Review
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 Washingtonfrom politicians to speechwriters to low-level staffershas an Instagram account.A timely, ambitious, and uneven effort from an excellent contemporary writer. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
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.--Magan Szwarek Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
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
