Mislaid

A Novel

By: Nell Zink

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start - she's a lesbian, he's gay - but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.

Worried that Lee will have her committed for her erratic behavior, Peggy goes underground, adopting an African-American persona for her and her daughter. They squat in a house in an African-American settlement, eventually moving to a housing project where no one questions their true racial identities.

As Peggy and Lee's children grow up, they must contend with diverse emotional issues: Byrdie must deal with his father's compulsive honesty while Karen struggles with her mother's lies - she knows neither her real age nor that she is white nor that she has any other family.

Years later a minority scholarship lands Karen at the University of Virginia, where Byrdie is in his senior year. Eventually the long-lost sibling will go, setting off a series of misunderstandings and culminating in a comedic finale worthy of Shakespeare.

©2015 Nell Zink (P)2015 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

bad editing

the narrator is great, but there are maybe a dozen "lags" where there's a few-second pause, then the narration picks back up a few seconds before the pause. done kind of editing problem.

Disappointing

Was sold on Zink myth -- as yet undiscovered genius with life so far from ordinary her books could only reflect something never before seen. But I got a very novelly novel filled with novel things, a mashup of collegiate novel and the Secret Life of Bees thing where a white woman writes about being raised black in the south, with politics that presented themselves as different but ultimately weren't. Maybe it was a joke about these stories/politics I didn't get. I would recommend to a book club for white Christian moms or something, to read after something about an Indian grandmother's magical relationship w spices or a cancer memoir.

Had Hoped for More

Such a shame, I was really ready to love this book. Some glowing reviews, an interesting premise, well written, so...what's not to like? Well, I found myself rather bored and overall disappointed that I was not enjoying this book. It was so unremarkable that I can't even remember big pieces of the story shortly after having listened to it.

SEXUAL ORIENTATION

Sexual orientation, and what became known as LBGT rights, is a hotly debated issue in America. Four rulings between 1996 and 2015 changed the rights of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community. The Supreme Court invalidated a state law banning protected class recognition based on homosexuality; invalidated sodomy laws nationwide, denied the validity of the “Defense of Marriage Act”, and made same-sex marriage legal in America.

Nell Zink deftly and intelligently covers a host of subjects that warrant the time it takes for the public to read or listen to “Mislaid”. It provides a better understanding of the LGBT community. It illustrates how much more difficult it is for an American woman than an American man to raise a child on their own.

Way better than I expected

This was a riveting story about the South, literary criticism, coming out as gay, racism, poverty, all within the prism of a uniquely and interestingly screwed up family. I couldn't put it down.