respectively). They form a band called
Marmalade Sky with Joe Harris, a friendly
singer with “no more wrinkles on him
than an action figure” and a “case of high-
functioning Williams syndrome.”
The first half of the book follows
Pam and Daniel as they make their way
through the intricacies of this subculture.
The friends meet to jam and prowl the
Lower East Side. Pam becomes pregnant
unintentionally and takes the name Svo-
boda at city hall. The newlyweds hire Joe
to watch over baby Flora. Spending time
with a child turns out to be an excellent
career move: Joe’s baby-babble lyrics land
him a record deal and stardom. “Ruins
meets Badfinger in a jar of Gerber’s” reads
a review in an underground zine.
Zink narrates this story in a deadpan
third person. Her sentences are little
nuggets, in careful equipoise between
high irony and mere accuracy: “Post-
punk women had exchanged duct tape
on their nipples for heels and cocktail
dresses without compromising their
ironic focus on objectification by the
male gaze and the appropriation of ep-
ithets intended to belittle and demean
them.” It is not always clear where, ex-
actly, these jabs are meant to land.
These pronouncements guide the plot
toward a growing sense of political fore-
boding. As Pam and Daniel watch their
friend’s rise to fame, “Operation Desert
Shield marched inexorably toward
war.... There was officially a recession
on.” The politics of Zink’s dry narration
are defined by the sharpness of her bite,
no matter who is getting bitten. The novel
presents a sardonic view of violence, war,
and climate change, as well as the actions
required to counter climate change. Here
is Zink on the Middle East: “A CNN
correspondent was trapped in Baghdad.
He described his fear in great detail, con-
veying a sense that war was ultra-scary....
Plucky little Israel had fended off re-
peated Arab invasions, and not through
the power of prayer.”
As the novel unfolds, the reader isn’t
sure whether its portraits count as real-
ism or as satire. The novel seems to ap-
proach the sweeping, multigenerational
sagas of Zink’s pen pal Franzen. In tone
and structure, “Doxology” sheds Zink’s
usual frantic energy. But, even as she
turns toward the cadences of social re-
alism, Zink fights its constraints. She
places potholes along her paved road.
A “Somali epileptic with one leg” is
introduced and ignored after a single
line—one of Zink’s many small provo-
cations that flare and swiftly fizzle.
On September 11th, Joe overdoses
on heroin. Pam and Daniel, worried that
the city has become unsafe, have taken
young Flora to Washington, D.C., where
she is reared by her grandparents. Flora
gets a Cadillac education—cathedral
school and unlimited grandparental at-
tention. The result is a strange combi-
nation of ideology and careerist prag-
matism. Flora, brought up to believe
that climate change is a pressing prob-
lem, has become passionate about sus-
tainable development.
Her commitment, however, runs up
against the limitations of every available
outlet for change. A college trip to Ethi-
opia to study soil science is enough to
convince her that activism can’t happen
incrementally. After graduation, she for-
goes a master’s degree and takes a me-
nial position at the Sierra Club. “To ac-
quire leverage,” Zink writes, “a would-be
professional do-gooder must commit to
long stints of unpaid work.” Flora can’t
imagine making a life for herself out-
side establishment channels. She starts
to volunteer with the Green Party, and
her cynicism about the efficacy of her
work soars to greenhouse-gas levels.
The outside world circles and in-
trudes: we find ourselves in 2016. Trump
is running for President. Flora meets a
Democratic Party operative named Bull
Gooch at a Green Party event and they
start dating. Bull encourages her to climb
up the Greens’ low branches: “He as-
sumed she would do the Greens more
harm than good.”
H
ere the novel seems not to know
whether it should compete with
the news or outdo it. The characters are
all drawn to the threat against the White
House. Pam and Daniel grouse when
Flora goes to work for the Jill Stein cam-
paign, and yet:
Ultimately it seemed sufficient consolation
to them both to sit at home drinking coffee
and reading in the New York Times that there
was an 85 percent chance of a Democratic win.
It was soothing, like a cross between an 85 per-
cent chance of a refreshing late-summer rain
and Hillary somehow polling at 85 percent of
likely voters, though not even Pam could come
up with a plausible explanation for the source
of the number.
O
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