In Avalon, Nell Zink’s Characters — and Her Readers — Have Nowhere to Hide
In novelist Nell Zink’s new book, Avalon, we might not recognize her characters’ circumstances, but we might recognize ourselves in their near-feral stupidity.
Nell Zink at the Cheltenham Literature Festival on October 2, 2015, in Cheltenham, England. (David Levenson / Getty Images)
Over the course of eight years and six novels, Nell Zink has undertaken a thorough exploration of escape routes. In her first novel, The Wallcreeper, the protagonist Tiffany, bored with her life, buys a one-way ticket out by marrying a pharmaceutical researcher named Stephen, paying for it with her autonomy. She doesn’t seem to mind. They end up moving to Switzerland, where Tiffany occupies her time with homemaking tedium and half-hearted affairs.
Tiffany is unhappy but not oblivious. At one point, she calls sex with a paramour
loving and beautiful in the expressionist, pathetic-fallacy sense in which you might say a meadow was loving and beautiful even if it was full of hamsters ready to kill each other on sight, but only when they’re awake. I mean, you just ignore the hamsters and look at the big picture.
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