Nicotine: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
One of Huffington Post's 20 Fall 2016 Books You'll Need for Your Bookshelf
Featured in New York Magazine's Fall 2016 Preview
An Entertainment Weekly Fall 2016 Must-Read
Featured in LitHub's 2016 Bookseller's Fall Preview
Featured in The Guardian's Fall 2016 Books Preview: The Best American Writing
From the "wonderfully talented" (Dwight Garner, New York Times) author of Mislaid and The Wallcreeper comes a fierce and audaciously funny new novel, dazzling in its energy and ambition: a story of obsession, idealism, and ownership, centered around a young woman who inherits her bohemian father's childhood home.
Recent business school graduate Penny Baker has rebelled against her family her whole life-by being the conventional one. Her mother, Amalia, was a member of an Amazonian tribe called the Kogi; her much older father, Norm, long ago attained cult-like deity status among a certain group of aging hippies while operating a 'healing center' in New Jersey. And she's never felt particularly close to her much-older half-brothers from Norm's previous marriage-one wickedly charming and obscenely rich (but mostly just wicked), one a photographer on a distant tropical island.
But all that changes when her father dies, and Penny inherits his childhood home in New Jersey. She goes to investigate the property and finds it not overgrown and abandoned, but rather occupied by a group of friendly anarchist squatters whom she finds unexpectedly charming, and who have renamed the property Nicotine House. The residents of Nicotine House (defenders of smokers' rights) possess the type of passion and fervor Penny feels she's desperately lacking, and the other squatter houses in the neighborhood provide a sense of community Penny's never felt before, and she soon moves into a nearby residence, becoming enmeshed in the political fervor and commitment of her fellow squatters.
As the Baker family's lives begin to converge around the fate of the Nicotine House, Penny grows ever bolder and more desperate to protect it-and its residents-until a fateful night when a reckless confrontation between her old family and her new one changes everything.
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Nell Zink. (2016). Nicotine: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Nell Zink. 2016. Nicotine: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Nell Zink, Nicotine: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2016.
MLA Citation (style guide)Nell Zink. Nicotine: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2016.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 3 | 3 |
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Nell Zink grew up in rural Virginia. She has worked in a variety of trades, including masonry and technical writing. In the early 1990s, she edited an indie rock fanzine. Her books include The Wallcreeper, Mislaid, Private Novelist, and Nicotine, and her writing has appeared in n+1, Granta, and Harper's. She lives near Berlin, Germany.
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One of Huffington Post's 20 Fall 2016 Books You'll Need for Your Bookshelf
Featured in New York Magazine's Fall 2016 Preview
An Entertainment Weekly Fall 2016 Must-Read
Featured in LitHub's 2016 Bookseller's Fall Preview
Featured in The Guardian's Fall 2016 Books Preview: The Best American Writing
From the "wonderfully talented" (Dwight Garner, New York Times) author of Mislaid and The Wallcreeper comes a fierce and audaciously funny new novel, dazzling in its energy and ambition: a story of obsession, idealism, and ownership, centered around a young woman who inherits her bohemian father's childhood home.
Recent business school graduate Penny Baker has rebelled against her family her whole life-by being the conventional one. Her mother, Amalia, was a member of an Amazonian tribe called the Kogi; her much older father, Norm, long ago attained cult-like deity status among a certain group of aging hippies while operating a 'healing center' in New Jersey. And she's never felt particularly close to her much-older half-brothers from Norm's previous marriage-one wickedly charming and obscenely rich (but mostly just wicked), one a photographer on a distant tropical island.
But all that changes when her father dies, and Penny inherits his childhood home in New Jersey. She goes to investigate the property and finds it not overgrown and abandoned, but rather occupied by a group of friendly anarchist squatters whom she finds unexpectedly charming, and who have renamed the property Nicotine House. The residents of Nicotine House (defenders of smokers' rights) possess the type of passion and fervor Penny feels she's desperately lacking, and the other squatter houses in the neighborhood provide a sense of community Penny's never felt before, and she soon moves into a nearby residence, becoming enmeshed in the political fervor and commitment of her fellow squatters.As the Baker family's lives begin to converge around the fate of the Nicotine House, Penny grows ever bolder and more desperate to protect it-and its residents-until a fateful night when a reckless confrontation between her old family and her new one changes everything.
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"Extraordinary... Get the book for its crackling prose and razor-sharp wit, but ready yourself for its blitzkrieg of startling imagery." — Village Voice
"Undeniably excellent... Propulsive... This is Zink at her most heartfelt... Zink is an architect. She builds worlds that look a little like ours, but are wrong enough to make one think—really think, not just feel. " — New Republic
"Intellectually restless, uniquely funny...Propulsive, wonderfully stuffed with irreverent and absorbing banter...What's most bootylicious in this novel is Zink's warmhearted embrace of her subjects...One enjoys every minute with these obliging kooks....There may be some readers who want to make out with this book." — New York Times Book Review
"Smart and often very funny... Even while Zink skewers bohemian stereotypes — the affluent squatter, the chain-smoking environmentalist — she cares for her characters, imbuing them with complicated personalities, causes and sexual proclivities. Rich sensory detail, earnest dialogue and raw emotion...Absorbing, original... Belongs on your fall list." — Chicago Tribune
"She's a deadpan comedian, her sentences funny yet plump with existential dread...You're never tempted to put Ms. Zink's novels aside. They contain so much backspin and topspin that you're kept alert by the leaping motion... Her books are sexy... I could listen to Ms. Zink's dialogue all day." — Dwight Garner, New York Times
"Even when Zink is being conventional, she's exemplary. What makes her satire so exciting and so novel is the empathy of her writing... Exciting and provocative... She's a singular figure in the literary landscape, and Nicotine is a perfect introduction to her brilliant, off-kilter world." — Vox
"The author's best work... Zink is a wordsmith's wordsmith. She's sharp, wry, and might be a genius." — The Millions
"A hilarious perversion of the rom-com...Ms. Zink's 2015 novel Mislaid delightfully sent up racial and gender mores, and here again she has affectionate fun tweaking the pieties of her cast of businessmen, cultists and activists. ...Nicotine is light reading in the best sense. Think Wodehouse for millennials." — Wall Street Journal
"[A] wild and nervy novel. Zink is a master of rapid character development, shifting perspectives, sex scenes and plot twists. ... "Nicotine" was so addictive it made me want to reach for a cigarette when I was done." — Los Angeles Times
"Zink writes some of the most comical lust between "love weasels" in contemporary fiction...[She] excels at scathing set pieces that caustically sum up places and local cultures...She gets her characters in motion, like mismatched roommates in a ramshackle house, and lets us enjoy watching them pinball around." — Washington Post
"Zink has a sharp knack for illuminating the challenges facing American millennials circa now... [In Nicotine] you'll find the cutting social commentary and sharply drawn characters of one of this decade's most promising new novelists." — Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Zink has instantly become one of the most unusual, refreshing voices in contemporary fiction. Her work is completely unfettered by genteel literary conventions and replete with robust storytelling...Both a satire of and a valentine to the 21st-century counterculture, Nicotine is sexy and political and hilarious." — Slate
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August 15, 2016
Zink’s novel of anarchy in life, love, and real estate focuses on Penny Baker, daughter of healing expert and retired shaman Norm Baker, who dies after a prolonged painful illness, leaving behind Penny and her disjointed family. Amalia, Norm’s adopted daughter whom he rescued from a Cartagena garbage dump, is also Norm’s second wife and Penny’s mom. As a not-so-grieving widow, Amalia lusts after hard-hearted Matt, Norm’s oldest son from his first marriage. After seeing Norm through his last days, Penny finds herself homeless, unemployed, and haunted by memories. Matt suggests she reclaim the family’s neglected Jersey City house, but the house, christened “Nicotine” by the anarchist activist squatters who occupy it, has only one vacant room, and it’s filled with toxic waste drums. So Penny moves into another squatter home and visits Nicotine, where she falls for self-proclaimed asexual Rob. In bold strokes, punchy metaphors, and striking imagery, Zink etches her absurdist vision of modern culture, likening Norm’s hospice to a brothel licensed as a strip club because customers must ask for what they want in code (such as sex at the brothel, or quick, painless death through drugs at the hospice). Scenes of watching a loved one die and anarchists giving more family support than family add a touching chord to this impertinent, mordant portrait of a corroded society badly in need of reclamation.
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May 15, 2016
A quirky, sharply observant chronicler whose tales of unexpected domesticity say a lot about contemporary society, Zink won enthusiastic fans--not to mention several best book nods and a National Book Award long-listing--for last year's Mislaid. Here, rebel-with-a-difference Penny Baker resists the overblown idealism of her parents (mom's from a South American tribe, while fading hippie dad's still famous for his psychedelic healing center) and the questionable charms of her half-brothers to lead a conventional life. But when she meets a bunch of anarchistic young rebels cheerfully squatting in the house she inherits on her father's death, Penny blazes up with passion, commitment, and a sudden sense of belonging. The house, by the way, is nicknamed Nicotine because these edgy Millennials are committed to smokers' rights. With a 50,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- premium: True
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September 1, 2016
Zink's (Mislaid, 2016) latest novel explores the amorphous complexity of family identity and human connection amid modern-day social perceptions. Penny is born in Brazil to young Amelia and older Norm. After her father's traumatic death, Penny, now in her early twenties, is sent to Norm's childhood home in Jersey City to oversee the eviction of longtime squatters. She discovers that it has become part of a group of abandoned properties now housing diverse groups of activists. Rather than revealing her identity, Penny falls in with the residents, moving into a nearby house and engaging in the philosophical debates and actions of the collective. When Penny's arrogant half brother, Matt, catches wind of the situation, he takes matters into his own hands, and everything becomes more complex when he falls into an intense liaison with Penny's housemate. Meanwhile, Penny navigates deepening connections with fellow residents, particularly the easygoing Rob, while being besieged by questions about her unconventional family. Zink's heady, witty novel traverses diverse perspectives and intentions, offering rich explorations of the characters' varied conflicts and subversive lives.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
- premium: True
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August 1, 2016
The day after her father dies, Penny Baker is evicted. A shaman whose "Last Resort" clinic in Brazil eased wealthy clients through their final hours in a haze of herbal supplements and native ritual, Norman Baker ironically suffered the American way of death, with tubes and transfusions in a Manhattan hospital bed. To Penny's mother, Amalia, Norm's passing is a nuisance; to her half-brothers, Matt and Patrick, it's a potential business venture. But for Penny, who cared for him at the end, it's the loss of her North Star. Just out of college, jobless, and homeless, Penny buses out to Jersey City in search of her grandparents' abandoned house, where she discovers a thriving community of disparate squatters and a place that feels like home. Penny's dilemma? How can she embrace the causes of her anarchist friends, remain loyal to her dad's memory, and become a wage-earning adult? VERDICT Zink, whose novel Mislaid entered the literary scene amid effusive praise, writes with tongue firmly in cheek. Her jaded worldview, leavened by a well-honed sense of the absurd, reveals itself as she skewers millennials and boomers alike for failing to live up to their once tightly held convictions. [See Prepub Alert, 4/18/16.]--Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Featured in New York Magazine's Fall 2016 Preview
An Entertainment Weekly Fall 2016 Must-Read
Featured in LitHub's 2016 Bookseller's Fall Preview
Featured in The Guardian's Fall 2016 Books Preview: The Best American Writing
From the "wonderfully talented" (Dwight Garner, New York Times) author of Mislaid and The Wallcreeper comes a fierce and audaciously funny new novel, dazzling in its energy and ambition: a story of obsession, idealism, and ownership, centered around a young woman who inherits her bohemian father's childhood home.
Recent business school graduate Penny Baker has rebelled against her family her whole life-by being the conventional one. Her mother, Amalia, was a member of an Amazonian tribe called the Kogi; her much older father, Norm, long ago attained cult-like deity status among a certain group of aging hippies while operating a 'healing...
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