Mislaid

The incomparable Cassandra Campbell shines again with an excellent audiobook performance. This fast-paced, absorbing novel follows Peggy, a winning protagonist, into and out of myriad relationships. We root for her as she navigates her staid Southern parents, challenging husband, pompous in-laws, and beloved children. Campbell, as always, creates a believable cast of characters with her acrobatic voice and accents. She captures the wry humor that is a staple of the novel's tone, as well as the omnipresent irony of trying to be oneself in an environment that values only conformity. When Peggy's marriage dissolves, she breaks out on her own; the listener will be glad to go along for the ride. L.B.F. Winner of AudioFIle Earphones Award © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

Starred review from March 30, 2015
In Zink’s second novel (following The Wallcreeper, named one of the best books of 2014 by PW), a gay man and a gay woman meet at Virginia’s Stillwater College in the 1960s, marry and have children, and eventually separate—it’s a deceptively slim epic of family life that rivals a Greek tragedy in drama and wisdom. The mother, Meg, goes on the lam, taking the identity of a deceased black girl for her daughter, Karen, to start a new life in the rural South (Meg tells the community that she and her daughter are of African-American lineage, though they are white), while her son, Byrdie, remains with the father, Lee. Years later, the kids’ paths cross in a confluence of events at the University of Virginia. The novel deftly handles race, sexuality, and coming of age. Zink’s insight is beautifully braided into understated prose that never lets the tension subside; the narrator’s third-person voice is wry, and the dialogue is snappy. In one scene Meg reflects on how she’ll raise Karen in her new identity: “Children have no hearts and their minds are rickety towers of surreal detritus.” The various ways the characters’ memories and motives affect the action is frequently “mislaid,” from the inciting relationship to the far-flung situations in which the characters find themselves—it all points to Zink’s masterly subtlety and depth.

August 1, 2015

A number of works of fiction lately have touched on the topic of a white person living with another racial identity, including Jess Row's Your Face in Mine, Reif Larson's I Am Radar, and this latest from Zink (The Wallcreeper), all of which seem particularly prescient in light of the recent Rachel Dolezal controversy. In this case, 1960s lesbian teenager Peggy marries her gay college poetry professor after getting pregnant, then runs away with her daughter, adopting African American identities for both of them. That mother and daughter are blond-haired and white is explained in the book by the "one drop" rule, and the hardships and challenges she and her daughter face as "people of color" figure prominently in the story. VERDICT The setup and book jacket seem to promise an outlandish satire, but the story itself is chilly and lackluster; Cassandra Campbell's narration is pleasant but does nothing to enhance the ostensible humor of the story (which this reviewer found to be utterly lacking). At least there's a happy ending. ["Crafting a zany story with outlandish characters doing the unexpected, Zink successfully creates a comedy of errors offering a happy ending for an impossible situation": LJ 4/1/15 review of the Ecco: HarperCollins hc.]--Victoria A. Caplinger, NoveList, Durham, NC

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