Mislaid: A Novel
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.52 (830 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0062364782 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-11-28 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
fiction, Mislaid is the hilarious comedy of race and gender we didn’t know we needed.” (New York magazine / Vulture's 10 Best Books of 2015)“Everything from gender theory and academic politics to racial issues is delightfully skewered and upended Nell Zink has written an antic novel about sex and race that’s not quite like anything else this year.” (Wall Street Journal, Best Books of 2015)“Ms. Her vocabulary is tremendous and her sentences are penetrating and agile.” (Harper's Magazine)&ldqu
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. Eventually the long lost siblings will meet, setting off a series of misunderstandings and culminating in a comedic finale worthy of Shakespeare.. 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. They squat in a house in an African-American settlement, eventually moving to a housing project where no one questions their true racial identities. LONGLISTED FOR THE 2015 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
In the early 1990s, she edited an indie rock fanzine. Nell Zink grew up in rural Virginia. Her debut novel, The Wallcreeper, was published in 2014. She lives near Berlin, Germany.. She has worked in a variety of trades, including masonry and technical writing. Her writing has also appeared in n+1
Promising start I bought this book because of The New Yorker's glowing profile of Ms. Zink and the first chapter of the book published as a short story in the same. It's good to have friends in high places! The first half of this book raced by and was witty and thoughtful - I laughed out loud during the commute to work. The last half, though, descended into slapstick and circled its way to a nice pat ending. A promising sta. Not for me. I won this book through Goodreads First Reads.I really wanted to like this book but in the end I found myself not really caring what would happen. Peggy is really the most unlikable lead character I’ve come across in a while. The book starts off basically with Peggy declaring she’s a lesbian then starting college only to sleep with a male teacher and end up pregnant. Lee marries her to do the hon. Winship75 said Incognegro. As I read Mislaid, I couldn't figure out if Nell Zink was laughing with black people or at black people and I finally came to the conclusion that she was doing both. Only a white woman would write about a white woman and her white (blonde!) daughter faking their way through life as black people and turn their story into something satirical. Real black folks know black life isn't a comedy. I actually found my