In this podcast, Candice Carty-Williams interviews the spectacular and ever-engaging Nell Zink, an author who, having written for years, has risen to critical acclaim almost overnight, and essentially wrote her novel The Wallcreeper to troll Jonathan Franzen.
Listen to Nell talk Mislaid sex, racism, class, the difference in process between writing the two sensational novels that make up the beautiful box set that nobody can stop talking about, and stealing resources from work. We’ve all done it. Except for me, I’ve never, ever, stolen an office supply in my life.
‘Mislaid is that oft-discussed, rarely spotted phenomenon – a Great American Novel. It catapults Zink straight into the company of not only Franzen, but also Donna Tartt and Philip Roth, Tom Wolfe and John Irving. Zink takes her big-name predecessors in her stride and goes that bit weirder…(The Wallcreeper) might be raw and rough around the edges, but it certainly marks Zink as an extraordinary talent’.
The Daily Telegraph
‘Received wisdom is that tomorrow’s release of Go Set A Watchman, the sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird, is 2015’s Massive Book Happening. But James Elliott, manager of Daunt Books Fulham Road, insists otherwise: “It’s already happened. Nell Zink was a living author unknown for decades before Jonathan Franzen found her and sent her work to publishers. Her novel Mislaid came out this year – a whip-smart send-up of every kind of identity politics in 1960s Virginia, and the kind of fearless take on heartland America we haven’t seen since, well, Harper Lee.”
Mr Hyde
‘This bold new take on the classic mistaken identity plot is the zany world of Zink all over and Mislaid, crazy as it is, is also an ambitious and tightly plotted novel, a welcome successor to her dazzling debut The Wallcreeper… Her novels are two of the most audacious and exciting I’ve read in a long time.’ Independent, Lucy Scholes
4thestatebooks