Nell Zink‘s Doxology (2019) traces America through its fin de siècle and entry into the 21st century, following a set of characters combining family of origin and family of choice, and centered on the East Coast.
A doxology is a short hymn of praise, a declaration of fealty to a God from whom all blessings flow–a formal declaration of sacred gratitude, if you will.
It’s an engaging read, punctuated by tragedy, and if you have affection for–especially–some of the communities in New York City or Washington, DC from the 1990s through the early 2010s, there will be much that resonates (including some deft handling of the impact of the September 11th attacks). While there are key characters that are High School dropouts, professional musicians, and teenage parents, Doxology is largely a novel of the privileged: the characters frequently need safety nets, but those nets are always present and generally provide the support that is needed, practically if not always emotionally. As such, the glimpses of DC and NYC are relatively narrow in scope.
Some of the characters will remain with you past the end of the novel, and for writing like this–where the internal development and relationships of the characters are truly what matters–there is little higher praise.
#WhatIWishICouldDo
Incorporate news and current events this seamlessly. Zink never falls into historical exposition and, as importantly, her characters’ reactions are never tinted by authorial hindsight. This is the hardest part of it, I think: it is so challenging to remember what we thought about something as it happened, as opposed to after we believed we understood it.