Nicotine - Softcover

Zink, Nell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0008179212 ISBN 13: 9780008179212

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2017

Synopsis

From the much acclaimed author of MISLAID and THE WALLCREEPER, a fierce and audaciously funny novel of families―both the ones we’re born into and the ones we create―a story of obsession, idealism, and ownership, centered around a young woman who inherits her bohemian late father’s 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.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Named a Best Book of 2016 by Slate and the Dallas Morning News

Unemployed—and unmoored by her father’s death—recent college graduate Penny Baker decides to fix up her dad’s childhood home in New Jersey. Instead, she finds it occupied by a group of friendly anarchist squatters who have renamed the property “Nicotine.” The residents (united in defense of smokers’ rights) and the other squatters in the neighborhood provide a sense of community and purpose that Penny feels she’s desperately lacking. She soon moves into a nearby residence, becoming enmeshed in their political fervor, and falling irredeemably in love with an asexual resident by the name of Rob. But the rest of Penny’s family has other plans—her mother and older half-brother would prefer to evict the squatters and gentrify the neighborhood. As the Baker family’s lives begin to converge around Nicotine, Penny grows ever bolder and more determined to protect it.

About the Author

Nell Zink grew up in rural Virginia. She has worked in a variety of trades, including masonry and technical writing. In the early 1990s she edited an indie rock fanzine. Her writing has also appeared in n+1. Her debut novel, The Wallcreeper, was published in 2014. She lives near Berlin, Germany.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0008179212
• ISBN 13: 9780008179212
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304