“I felt the darkness approaching – the fog of banality, the stubborn inadequacy of human life. The metaphysical gravity that tears down beauty, calls love dependence, cannot tolerate complexity.”
Since the beginning of her fiction career at 50, the American author Nell Zink has made a name for herself as a writer of intelligent, irreverent novels that seek to provoke and satirise contemporary society. From her debut, The Wallcreeper, to her 2019 take on 9/11, Nicotine, Zink’s wacky storylines are typically held together by a wry authorial voice and uncommon descriptive power. Her new novel, Avalon, continues the trend. A black comedy of female emancipation in contemporary California, it’s the most droll and unsentimental orphan tale you’ll read.
The orphan in question is Bran, who lives with her stepfather’s extended biker clan at a large plant nursery that acts as a front for various dodgy dealings. Bran’s mother ran off to be a Buddhist before dying of ovarian cancer. Her father moved states to start a new and better family. Housed in a shed and expected to work in the nursery when she’s not in school, Bran is basically the resident slave, with an Audrey Hepburn-esque beauty that she hides in baggy clothes for fear of drawing the attention of the predatory Henderson males.
School offers some respite through a small group of rich kids who run a literary magazine and adopt Bran as a kind of pet (certainly not an equal). The narrative spans Bran’s adolescence to early 20s as she tries, and frequently fails, to escape from the Hendersons. Along the way there are villains and mentors, improvements and setbacks, friends and foes, which could seem formulaic in the hands of another writer, but Zink is the opposite of formulaic: her books are marked by their inventiveness, vision and perception.
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When parents of a schoolfriend offer support after Bran is attacked at the nursery, their kindness is qualified: “I felt so lucky to have gotten to know her before I was all grown up and dripping blood.” Elsewhere, Zink tackles the abuses of late capitalism through her description of migrant workers at the nursery: “Each Eric was replaced with an Eric and each Roger with a Roger, so that the nursery was consistently staffed with one of each, Simon being optional for the Easter and Christmas rush.”
The book is full of such biting one-liners on society at large, on everything from class to gender to race. What sets Avalon apart from Zink’s previous books is that in addition to the whimsical plot turns and sharp social commentary, she has managed to create a hugely sympathetic and believable heroine in Bran. This is at heart a novel about trauma and how we’re bound to those who torment us: “I wondered whether my resistance to change was a product of my history, some sad admixture of fear of abandonment and training by the Hendersons, a rut from long habit, or an addiction.”
Avalon, with its mythical title from Arthurian legend, is loaded with cultural references, but wears all its lessons lightly. Zink wouldn’t do it any other way
The reader will root for Bran from the beginning and grow increasingly desperate for her to improve her situation as the book races along to its perfect, ambivalent end.
Zink’s previous books include The Wallcreeper, Mislaid, Private Novelist, Nicotine and Doxology. Her latest novel has echoes of the eccentric family stories of Ann Patchett and Miriam Toews, mixed with the offbeat humour of Miranda July. As Bran begins to learn more about herself and the world around her (often through books), the coming-of-age tale is mixed with a novel of ideas and even shades of self-help literature. Zink manages the mash-up with ease. She has great authorial command, an admirable swagger and manic intensity to her narration.
There’s even a tormented love story along the way with Peter, a troubled college genius from the east coast who allows Zink to show a different kind of abuse and misuse, as he simultaneously tells Bran that he loves only her but is getting engaged to another girl with better connections. Bran keeps going back for more: “I liked the adrenaline. He had hooked me on cheap thrills.”
Peter’s encyclopedic knowledge of literature, and his efforts to educate Bran, gives Zink a pass to comment on other works throughout the book in a way that feels gratifying and unforced: “Kafka’s The Castle? It’s a novel about feeling responsible for things that aren’t your responsibility ... Walden, which is about how people with money lead lives of quiet desperation.” Avalon, with its mythical title from Arthurian legend, is loaded with cultural references, but wears all its lessons lightly. Zink wouldn’t do it any other way. As Bran endearingly puts it: “The main character in all those books is the world in trouble, and it was me.”
