The Wallcreeper

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"Nell Zink's debut novel follows a downwardly mobile secretary from Philadelphia who marries an ambitious soon-to-be-expat pharmaceutical researcher in hopes that she will never work again. They end up in Germany, where it turns out that her new husband is tougher, sneakier, more sincere, more contradictory, and smarter than she is; she'd naturally thought it was impossible. Life becomes complicated with affairs, birding, and eco-terrorism. Bad things happen, yet they stagger through, clinging to each other from a safe distance. Eventually our heroine commences building a life of her own, in imitation of her husband, one soggy brick at a time."--Publisher's website.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Critics rave but I don't submitted by William Foreman on September 11, 2015, 11:45am A New Yorker profile of Nell Zink got me interested in her fiction. The article noted that everything about her seems made up. Her name. Where she lives: Bad Belzig. But it's all real, she insists. I just finished her first novel, The Wall Creeper, written in three weeks and sold to a small publisher for $300. It's got a brilliant first sentence. Critics have raved about it, but I'm not sure I liked it. It's about a birdwatching couple living in Switzerland and Germany - all things that really interest me. They become environmental activists and take turns cheating on each other until one of them reaches a sad ending. But Zink never got me to care much about the characters, who never seemed real to me. I can't recommend the book.