Author tries too hard to behave
“He started playing ukulele soon after his mother died.” That subtle intersection of the ordinary and absurd is Nell Zink’s trademark. Wit ricochets around straight-faced sentences like marbles in a can.
But despite its eccentricities, her latest book, Doxology, is surprisingly conventional. It is a long novel about an East Coast family woven into recent historical and political events. It feels like a quirky genius trying to behave at the dinner table.
The first, and best, section of Doxology is about the unusual friendship between several people born in the ’60s. The heroine, Pam, grows up in northwest Washington to a pair of WASPy parents. Before Pam hits puberty, she’s making money as a programmer, but the work doesn’t excite her. “She resolved to become a retro hippie earth mother,”
Zink writes.
She dives into the punk scene, worships Ian MacKaye and starts her own band called the Slinkies. At 17, with $70 in her pocket, she jumps on a bus and moves to New York City for an adventure.
The most endearing aspect of Doxology is the resilient joy racing through Zink’s characters. That is certainly true of Pam. And it’s true of her future husband, Daniel. Raised by born-again Christians in Wisconsin, he desires nothing but to love Pam and manage a record label. That dream is almost fulfilled when Pam and Daniel team up with a fearlessly ebullient young singer named Joe.
Zink saves her satirical fire for the world that moves in on Joe, a culture of corrupt commercialism. Her portrait of the parasitic relationship between fans and their idols is hilarious; her take on the record business exposes pomposity and abuse.
But about halfway through, it feels like somebody unplugged the electric guitars. What was initially a brash riff on pop culture becomes a laboured post-mortem of the 2016 election. This shift seems designed as a grasp for weightiness and relevance, which succeeds at the expense of the novel’s humour and surprise.
Bring back Zink’s electric wit.
The Washington Post