Nell Zink’s new novel has an original title: “Mislaid”. Whether race, class or gender – nothing can be found in the traditional place. The German title “Virginia” does not indicate anything. He simply names the place of the action, where everything seemed to be frozen in conventions in the 1960s.
But unusual characters also lived in this area. Lee Fleming, a poet and college lecturer from a famous family, is actually gay. His moderately ambitious Peggy student is actually a lesbian. But that means nothing at first. The two spontaneously stumble into a relationship and start a family. In Peggy’s review, it reads like this:
“Lee had been sexy to her once. But not because they had a relationship. On the contrary. Because they had no relationship. And then she stupidly became his partner. She wasted her love on a wolf.”
A racial farce
Lee’s generous manner and his infidelities drive Peggy out of the house after ten years. She leaves her son Byrdie behind and flees with her daughter Mireille to the even deeper Virginia province. With a stealthy birth certificate, she gives her blonde daughter a new identity. And not only that. Karen, as Mireille is now called, is officially black, because that’s officially documented. As a result, her mother Peggy is also black. It is now called Meg.
To find his daughter, the abandoned Lee Fleming hires private detectives, while the self-invented Meg lives a perfectly camouflaging life as a penniless black mother. Nell Zink combines finely dosed thriller elements with a close observation of the social integration of Meg and Karen in the southern life of the 1970s. The satire that the story develops into hits hard and precisely. Not only gender roles, but also other identities dissolve, especially those of the race. While other authors took a radical-historical approach to the topic of racism, such as Colson Whitehead in Underground Railroad, Nell Zink decided on the farce. The concept of race is being ridiculed.
Irish or Uzbeks
Nobody gets away scot-free. Not the whites in Karen’s school who particularly appreciate this black girl and her mother because they don’t look black. Not colored people like Lomax, who harnesses Meg into his drug business and thus ensures her survival.
“He hadn’t moved much in ten days, at most to switch to their sofa bed. Sluggishness was an accepted feature of Southern culture, even among disabled Indians, and maybe even more so if their non-Indian (‘Irish’) ancestors like that from Lomax, mainly Tajiks and Uzbeks. “
Was Barbie a Swede?
The parallel description of Lee’s life, which resigned itself to the absence of daughter and wife, is rather bland. Maybe because Nell Zink has kept the description of the American college for the grand finale. The black-and-black Karen, who is actually two years younger than on the stolen paper, goes to college with her real black friend Temple. The play of colors continues at college. After an incident at a Halloween party, the good-natured Temple is asked about Karen by a police officer and describes his girlfriend:
“Black, small, well built, long blond hair, blue eyes, ivory skin.”
The cop was confused. “Didn’t you just say black? (…)
“Yes. She is my friend.”
“And she is fair-skinned.”
“And.”
“But black.”
“She has a minority scholarship.”
“But her skin color turns black.”
“Everyone sees that she’s black. She has full lips and a small, flat nose, a bit like Barbie.”
“Barbie is Swedish.”
Temple said nothing because he thought they might not believe him.
Oops, the namesake
Zink describes the college universe with virtuosity, the ridiculous academic fashions, the pompous name dropping, the widespread use of drugs. In the midst of this world of immature young adults, the paths of the two siblings Mireille alias Karen (now black), who grew up separately, and the super-clever Großkotz Byrdie, completely father and still white, intersect. The happy ending, which leads to a bizarre trial, is skillfully and delicately dragged out by Nell Zink.
The author’s situational and verbal joke engages the happy reader in such a way that he is tempted to even consider the “George Manson University” to be one of her weird ideas – until, when looking at the original, it turns out to be sloppy of the Rowohlt editing department. The vague memory of Charles Manson obviously played a trick on him. Only the infamous musician and murderer really wasn’t the namesake of George Mason University, which is named after the democratic father of the Bill of Rights.
Gender and asterisk debates
Nell Zink’s satirical look is pleasantly fresh in the face of current identity debates and asterisk hair splitting, which are too often overly serious, ideological and theoretical – and have little to do with life as people live it: individualistic, contradictory and little for the outside viewer plausible.
In the end, the family is not united, but it is reconciled. And so normal parenting questions like Lee’s again arise: Is a permanent liaison really right for a 16 year old? But his recovered daughter Karen insists: she loves Temple and doesn’t want to go back to her father’s care. The narrator summarizes the daughter-father conversation in the last lines:
“And yet she insisted on continuing to live with Temple, and told Lee that she could always be sure to find some pizza in the fridge with him. She would never have to cook. Lee admitted that this was a strong argument. “
The comedy is over. Father Lee is at peace. Mother Meg will move to New York, write plays and live with her new partner Luke. What a pity that this unusual fairy tale doesn’t go on. We could have had a lot of fun with this staff.
Nell Zink: “Virginia”
Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg
320 pages, 22.00 euros.
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