Mislaid by Nell Zink

In Mislaid, Nell Zink isn't just arbitrarily zealous or unconventional and she doesn't make decisions on issues of race or gender without a deep consideration of literary tradition. Her many allusions to literature aren't for nothin'. She reads like a succinct Franzen, like you shrunk Freedom and forced it to address race. But Mark Twain is also present, so is Kafka, Beat Poets galore, and there is a palpable but nevertheless covert southern gothic tone reminiscent of, no kidding, William Faulkner.

On the other hand, Mislaid is all about not fitting in (no surprise there). While Zink effortlessly riffs of similarities she doesn't fit in with her predecessors or contemporaries. One could argue this is similar to her characters, but they'd be missing something subtle. Zink offers a widely diverse but intimately (and obscurely) connected cast of characters who, finding they don’t fit in with the traditional conservative settings they were born into, try to flee to progressive havens; a profoundly gay women's college, a hippy commune on a squirrel sanctuary, a university and small town obsessed with affirmative action, an abandoned house in a black community, and even the black community itself. But rather than finding where they were supposed to be as wildly different than where they were born, there is still a deep sense of being an outsider no matter where the characters find themselves. That's because to Zink, fitting in has nothing to do with finding the right people to reside with because even in "progressive" institutions (which are still institutions) fitting in is still a matter of permission. The politics of race and gender are everywhere; the main character Peggy escapes conservative middle class Midwestern family to a radical women's college where she still can't fit in and ends up being stymied into marriage because she gets pregnant and the old as dirt tradition of placing the familial liability of a child squarely on the shoulders of the mother is ubiquitous in America in the 60s regardless of what hippy college you go to. Every character faces privileges and disadvantages because of their perceived race or gender; characters white as the driven snow identify as black in what I think has Twain written all over it. And there really is no escaping these power structures, white males still get away with murder (figuratively speaking of course, no spoilers here), women are forced to be submissive, and black people are perversely discriminated against in ways that remind each character that it isn't about fitting in, but being let in.

This is all very complicated, but the reason why Zink can accomplish so much in such a short book is because she is a master at pacing. She will move through plot at break-neck but remarkably believable speeds and remain cogent. At the same time she is able to slow down moments to excruciatingly suspenseful detail by detail breakdown. I bring this up because I feel, to an extent, it saves this novel from being flimsy and almost whimsically insensitive to its own sentiments. As an example, Peggy and her daughter run away and pretend to be black to escape a potentially abusive marriage. Society unthinkingly accepts them as being black despite their white skin and blond hair because being black in America is a construct created for you by the powers at be, it isn't really about skin color. This idea, coupled with the comical fact that society wholly accepts them as such without a literal second thought, could be too irreverent, cartoonish, and at worst offensive, to a pretty serious theme. But in a dash readers can see how dependent this is on who holds power in a situation. Like they are painfully reminded that Peggy is not white when Temple, an African American friend, chases her down a street to give her a hug in an alley. A fretful and vivid scene of a police officer who feared for Peg's safety out of prejudice basically stops and frisks Temple, kicking the contents of his pockets into a puddle and treating him like a dog. The scene, and many like it, are wrenching. Pulling you out of the flowing plot and smacking you. They demonstrate a necessary fragility to Zink's narrative and message. It reminds everyone, the characters and readers, that no matter what choices you make, their ridiculousness, or believability, or merit are determined for you by the merciless powers of tradition. It's a sobering realization in the midst of a silly and unbelievable short narrative, hello Kafka 2016.