The Wallcreeper

by Nell Zink

Overview

The incredible breakout novel by one of the sharpest, funniest, most inventive writers of our time.

“Who is Nell Zink? She claims to be an expatriate living in northeast Germany. Maybe she is; maybe she isn’t. I don’t know. I do know that this first novel arrives with a voice that is fully formed: mature, hilarious, terrifyingly intelligent, and wicked. The novel is about a bird-loving American couple that moves to Europe and becomes, basically, eco-terrorists. This is strange, and interesting, but in between is some writing about marriage, love, fidelity, Europe, and saving the earth that is as funny and as grown-up as anything I’ve read in years. And there are some jokes in here that a young Don DeLillo would kill to have written. I hope he doesn’t kill Nell Zink.” (Keith Gessen)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780989760713
Publisher:	New York Review Books
Publication date:	10/01/2014
Pages:	200
Sales rank:	680,567
Product dimensions:	5.55(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

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 received a doctorate in Media Studies from the University of Tübingen, Germany. Her novel Mislaid was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2015. The Wallcreeper is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

You don't read Nell Zink so much as step into the ring with her. Every sentence is a jab or feint, rigged for surprise. Every word feels like a verb. The plot leaps will give you vertigo. Her debut novel…is a very funny, very strange work of unhinged brilliance—rude sex comedy meets environmental tract…Like its namesake, The Wallcreeper is fleet, stealthy and beautiful.

The New York Times - Parul Sehgal

This is an environmental novel, if a totally surprising one. It contains none of the earnestness we might expect from the genre…Instead Zink, through the misadventures of Tiffany, satirizes our tendency toward mindless consumption, the way we not only plunder resources in an effort to breed and feed but allow ourselves…to be similarly plundered: physically, emotionally, spiritually, creatively. It's a powerful message, made more powerful by its completely bananas delivery-system…Wake up, this book says: in its plot lines, in its humor, in its philosophical underpinnings and political agenda. You snooze and we all lose. Zink's work may be, at times, cerebral and a little distancing, but its vitality and purpose are invigorating. In that way, The Wallcreeper embodies the landscapes and creatures Tiffany ultimately aims to save. I'll pay it the highest compliment it knows—this book is a wild thing.

The New York Times Book Review - Robin Romm

★ 07/21/2014
Zink’s debut novel is a weird, funny, sad, and sharp story of growing up. Opening with a car accident in which young married couple Tiffany and Stephen hit a wallcreeper (a bird that Stephen, a fanatical birder, adopts as a pet and names Rudolf), causing Tiffany to miscarry, the bulk of the novel follows the couple’s push-and-pull years in Europe. Stephen, a stubborn and secretive pharmaceutical researcher stationed in Berne, makes enough money to support both of them; and Tiffany, who was bored at her last real job as a secretary, makes no bones about not wanting to work. In many ways, Tiffany and Stephen are the perfect match: they are both capricious, unfaithful (Stephen even sleeps with Tiffany’s “bikini barista” sister, with Tiffany’s blessing), and unsure of themselves. Their marriage is really just a loose agreement, and they spend most of the story drifting around each other: Stephen suffers an inner crisis and moves to Albania to study birds, while Tiffany, who’s never had to work hard, passes her days alone on the Elbe tearing down levees to flood a forest in need of water. “I couldn’t come up with a step I’d taken in life for my own sake,” she says. Written in short, fragmentary sections, Zink masterfully captures the slippery nature of human intimacy, the ways in which relationships both thrive on emotional gray areas and jump from one black-and-white area to another (jealousy and indifference; blame and forgiveness; listlessness and wonder). This is the introduction of an exciting new voice. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Nell Zink is a writer of extraordinary talent and range. Her work insistently raises the possibility that the world is larger and stranger than the world you think you know. You might not want to believe this, but her sentences and stories are so strong and convincing that you'll have no choice.” —Jonathan Franzen

“Nell Zink's heady and rambunctious debut novel . . . moves at breakneck speed. . . . Wake up, this book says: in its plot lines, in its humor, in its philosophical underpinnings and political agenda. I'll pay it the highest compliment it knows—this book is a wild thing.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Zink's debut novel doesn't need a celebrity blurb. . . . Its premise is so good it endorses itself.” —Wired

“Peppered with witty one-liners, Zink's portrayal of a young American couple that moves to Europe is strange, hilarious, and utterly captivating.” —Harper's Bazaar

“A brief yet masterful novel of epic breadth.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Zink's debut novel is a weird, funny, sad, and sharp story of growing up . . . the introduction of an exciting new voice.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Nell Zink might be the best living writer you haven't heard of yet, but prepare to hear her name a lot.” —Paper

“A strange, funny, super-engaging book.” —Bustle

“A manic, heartfelt, intellectual novel about an American couple living in Europe, The Wallcreeper is one of the best books of the year.” —Fiction Advocate

“It's a major debut, one that proves its author is gifted, strangely and beguilingly, with no shortage of honesty and eloquence.” —Flavorwire

From the Publisher

★ 2014-07-30
Zink's cerebral, fast-paced first novel chronicles a young woman's life in Europe after marrying a man she's known for three weeks. Following her husband, Stephen, from Philadelphia to Bern, Switzerland, for his research and development job at a medical device firm, Tiffany explains, "We didn't talk much about what we were doing. We had a deal." They're both whip-smart, but strangers, and the "deal" for Tiffany in this dark, philosophical sex comedy goes sour from the word go. After Stephen hits a bird with the car, swerves and crashes into a large rock, Tiffany miscarries, and he worries more about capturing the bird—the wallcreeper of the title—than helping her; weeks later, he forces her into anal sex. "I gasped for air, dreading the moment when he would pull out, and thought, Girls are lame." She half-jokes, "I felt like the Empress Theodora. Can I get more orifices?" but notes, "My sense of depending on Stephen for my happiness had evaporated." He does offer stability, though, so she stays married since she'd rather not work and has no degree or experience to bank on. They have affairs openly, and after his career goes sideways (drugs, heavy birding), their love survives, mostly as a hypnotic ideal. Moving to Germany, they live apart and become environmental activists, navigating complex public policy on natural resources—a subject Zink mines for humor and a sociopolitical counterpoint to Tiffany's personal chaos—then reunite for a harrowing trek by donkey through Albania. Tiffany agrees she's no feminist and doesn't argue when a friend quips about her life's trajectory, "My love, you have the attention span of a fish." But at a remove from the uproarious, inventive and infinitely quotable sentences, Tiffany's lonely existence careens from sex toward self-knowledge as death breezes by late in the book. A brief yet masterful novel of epic breadth.

Kirkus Reviews