Authors use Avalon Writer Writing to post ongoing novels on a public platform. Readers can upload an app to their phones or tablets and subscribe to the writers they choose. Writers then set their own price per chapter and are paid for their work based on their subscribers. Writers are also paired with partner film producing companies that may be interested in adapting their works into movies or TV series.
With a brash, often snarky sensibility, Nell Zink is a writer who has no problem delving into the dark corners of culture and politics. Her first full-length novel was a lustrous and irrepetible romp through the fecund culture of ancient Greece. In her new novel, Avalon, she focuses on modern-day Californian Cinderella Bran, and her struggle to find love and meaning in a world that has long been determined by a drug cartel.
Zink’s work is characterized by wondrously wild plot lines, and Avalon is no exception. Zink’s inclination for absurdity glimmers cheekily throughout the book, especially in her philosophical digressions on art and aesthetics. Avalon’s greatest sleight of hand, however, is the way it dangles the possibility of an outrageous plot twist just long enough to make a reader squirm, and then darts off in another direction.
In the end, Avalon is a novel about how a girl can overcome her own personal circumstances to find a life that brings her inexpressible happiness. This sense of hope is cautiously individual and relates solely to Bran’s outcomes, but it does offer an encouraging counterpoint to the general sense of pessimism about our late-stage capitalist wasteland.
As a reader, I found Avalon to be an absorbing, engaging, and thoroughly enjoyable read. Its plot is complex, but it is not convoluted. Its characters are believable, and the dialogue is naturalistic. The story is replete with anecdotes, vivid setting, and a wide variety of literary techniques, including heavy description, point of view, and a good dose of metaphors and similes.
Avalon is a fascinating story that will keep readers engaged from start to finish. It is also a book that will likely inspire the next generation of writers, and I recommend it highly.
EBM: How did your experience as a fiction writer prepare you for taking on memoir in Barefoot to Avalon?