Nicotine

Title:

Nicotine

Author:

Summary:

The conventional one in a non-conventional family, Penny Baker inherits her father's childhood home in New Jersey. She finds the property not overgrown and abandoned, but occupied by a group of friendly anarchist squatters whom she finds unexpectedly charming, and who have renamed the property Nicotine House. The residents are defenders of smokers' rights, and they possess the type of passion and fervor Penny feels she's desperately lacking. As her family's lives begin to converge around the fate of the Nicotine House, a reckless confrontation between her old family and her new one changes everything.

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

288 pages ; 24 cm

Genre:

Domestic fiction.

Subject Term:

Squatters -- Fiction.

Families -- Fiction.

Smoking -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

New Jersey -- Fiction.

Publisher:

Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers,

Publication Date:

2016

ISBN:

9780062441706

Publication Information:

New York : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2016]

Call Number:

ZINK

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003177774	Adult Fiction	ZINK	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

One of Huffington Post's 20 Fall 2016 Books You'll Need for Your Bookshelf

Featured in New York Magazine's Fall 2016 Preview

One of Slate's Best Books of 2016

An Entertainment Weekly Fall 2016 Must-Read

Featured in LitHub's 2016 Bookseller's Fall Preview

Featured in The Guardian 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.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

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. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Review

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 Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.