Nicotine

(Paperback)

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Description

From the much acclaimed author of MISLAID and THE WALLCREEPER, a fierce and audaciously funny novel of familiesboth the ones were born into and the ones we createa story of obsession, idealism, and ownership, centered around a young woman who inherits her bohemian late fathers childhood home.
She wills her body to be equally wraithlike. Not sodden, not heavy, not dead, but filled with crackling, electric life, like a stale Marlboro on fire.

Unemployed business major, Penny, has rebelled against her family her whole life by being the conventional one. Her mother was a member of a South American tribe; her father was a Jewish Shamanist with a psychedelic 'healing centre'. But everything changes when her father dies and Penny inherits his childhood home. Left weightless and unmoored after being the only member of her family with time for her dying father, Penny then finds his property occupied by a group of squatters, united in defence of smokers' rights and herself unexpectedly besotted with them, particularly Rob, the hot bicycle-and-tobacco activist.

Totally addictive and dangerously good, Nicotine is a fiercely funny novel in which passion is politics and nonviolence is the opposite of surrender.

Reviews

Hard as nails and soft as tears, this is Zinks best yet Monocle

Theres a liveliness in Zinks prose, an exuberance that carries the reader Zink writes with a joyful recklessness the sense that maybe she did write this novel in three weeks that makes her one of the freshest talents around. Joe Dunthorne, The Guardian

Nicotine is another hilarious and generally blurb-defying display of off-the-wall firepower. Zink has enormous fun with her cast of clueless, horny, hippy activists, but shes the real anarchic spirit. Its weirdly affecting, totally addictive and exhilaratingly unlike anything else youll read Daily Mail

Nicotine is a fitting title. Her sentences are like cigarettes: the first few are dizzying and not always pleasant, but before you know it, youre hooked. Nicotine is a very funny book that has very serious things to say about the hypocrisies of millennial attitudes to love and power and desire. The Daily Telegraph*****

Nicotine is addictive she combines the fiercely funny with whipsmart originality to dizzying effect Stylist

Nicotine proves Zinks distinctive verve as mesmerising as ever Independent

Zinks prose is an always fascinating instrument, one as flitting and amorphous as the attention span of her characters Her sentences can stun, perfectly nailing a situation or emotion The Spectator

The extended description of Norms death is full of persuasive, unflinching detail; Zink takes time and care, to powerful effect Sunday Times

Deadly dry comedy. Zinks unconventionality is refreshing The Times, Books of the Year

Shes a startlingly original voice, playfully wise, sometimes disturbing Big Issue North

Zink is an audacious writer she always creates vibrant, off-kilter worlds for her characters to inhabit The Times

Nicotine is a whirlwind of a book Zink has a great gift for ventriloquism. Her work brims with funny dialogue rollicking fun for the 300 or so pages that it lasts TLS

Author Bio

Nell Zink was born in 1964 in southern California and grew up in rural Virginia. She attended Stuart Hall School and the College of William and Mary, where she majored in philosophy. Rather late in life she got a doctorate in Media Studies from the University of Tbingen, Germany. She works as a translator for Zeitenspiegel Reportagen and lives in Bad Belzig, south of Berlin.