Avalon

Starred review from March 21, 2022
Zink (Doxology) delves into class, art, and American culture in a characteristically witty bildungsroman. The narrator, Brandy, is raised on a topiary nursery in semirural California, where she provides unpaid labor from a young age in exchange for necessities; her late mother’s partner, Doug, also works there. Life improves when Brandy befriends Jay, an upper-class kid in love with flamenco, who enrolls at UCLA and crushes on classmate Peter, an East Coast intellectual-in-waiting. When Brandy meets Peter while visiting Jay, the two almost immediately fall in love, and the rest of the novel sets Brandy’s rough-cut brilliance in tension with Peter’s academic ambitions. She spends less time working for Doug and more time with Jay, sleeping on his floor and helping with film projects. Meanwhile, Peter gets engaged to a well-off woman who promises to make life “uncomplicated.” The characters let forth some hilariously caustic barbs against the film program’s bland progressive politics, such as when Peter encourages Brandy and Jay to upend a “social change” assignment: “You want to find out how you can tweak speculative utopias to make them palatable to your social-justice-warrior film school, and I think with libertarianism you’re on the right track.” Even more impactful than the intellectual ballistics is the tortured romance story. The style is all Zink’s own, and she’s as brilliant as ever here.

June 10, 2024

Bran's upbringing was hardly traditional. Having lost both of her parents, Bran was raised on a Southern California topiary farm run by an unsavory biker gang, earning her keep as an unpaid and overworked laborer. She lives on the outskirts of society, with no birth certificate or identification, no support, no money, and the most rudimentary accommodations. Bran's world opens up when she meets Jay, an infectiously friendly choreographer (and shockingly bad flamenco dancer), and Jay's classmate, Peter, a stuffy academic. Zink's (Doxology) latest, narrated with perfect assurance by Justis Bolding, addresses class, privilege, academia, and art, following Bran through her hopeless crush on Peter, her fascination with and despair at becoming an artist, and her recognition of the person she wants to be. Listeners may be taken out of the story with occasional mispronunciations, but they will be captivated by Bolding's depiction of Bran, which channels her wry wit and gritty determination. VERDICT This bleakly humorous and insightful coming-of-age story will appeal to readers of absurdist, character-driven fiction. Recommend to fans of Sally Rooney, Meg Wolitzer, and Claire Messud, as well as to readers of Zink's previous works, particularly Nicotine.--Sarah Hashimoto

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