Avalon by Nell Zink

I see that both critics and readers alike are split on this one, but I loved it. One reviewer described the plot as both shapeless and oddly propulsive--I would 100% agree, but while that was framed as a negative, that is what I really liked about this, which is a modern day rags to not exactly riches, but to a way out of poverty--mostly. Bran, the narrator of Nell Zink’s latest novel, is abandoned by her parents as a child, and grows up in southern California with the criminal family of her mother’s ex-boyfriend. From early childhood she is used by them as unpaid labor in the plant nursery they run as a front operation. It’s a world of gang-affiliated bikers and exploited immigrant laborers, where Bran sleeps in an unheated lean-to and lives on canned food warmed with propane. But, in the way of fictional characters, Bran is meant for better things, and the book describes her haphazard rise into the ranks of the middle-class artistic precariat. So her benchmark for comfort is low, and it serves her well as she slowly moves towards getting a life for herself.