The story moved quickly, made me laugh, and I could empathize with the characters foreign dislocation. I relished the metaphors: "we were drinking piña coladas and watching the coots sweep the water with bits of reed held in their bills they way they do, like brownie scouts sweeping out a parish hall, inept and squeaking, and the DJ had put on Horace Andy ("Skylarking")." Or "I slunk out like a joker-slash-thief with my collar up and my hat pulled past my eyebrows" when she quits her job at the nightclub ticket window. Her sister who works as a bikini barista in Tukwila had me of course, knowing Tukwila: "Tukwila, in my opinion, was the trap in the drain..Easterners hear 'coffee culture' and think of Vienna, not longshoremen idling their pickups at a drive-through." And Stephen's mother "who was always wearing scarves and big pants, like 'flowing garments,' and slept with Paul from Peter, Paul and Mary." Or the pitiful bar where Elvis takes them dancing is vividly depicted as "garbage in, garbage out" in terms of imprints on the human brain "turning to dust and slowly wafting a thin layer of grime on to every other object in your brain....[needing] to scrape the gunk off" Haven't you ever felt like that? Sometimes my own brain needs a thorough vacuuming particularly after visiting a sordid dance club like that., But on behalf of my friends who love a plot and thrive on characterization, this is not their book. Stephen is a cipher with an irratic on again/off again desire to have a child and count birds, but he's not much of a character, in fact, most of the characters are funny but thin until they get environmental (or just mental?). Tiffany and her sister join the men in strenuous bed hopping, as if "miming reproductive acts were my sole aim in life," in love, out of love. But as a satirical look at men, women, marriage, multinationals, environmentalists, birdwatchers and German or Croatian or Macedonian or Albanian"anarcho-sensualist renegade(s)," it is perfectly tuned. I had a good time.
( )

A nasty, brilliant critique of feminism, ecoterrorism, and those annoying folks known as birders. ( )

Tiffany and Stephen are American birdwatchers living in Berne, where Stephen is some kind of researcher. At the start of the novel, there is an accident and Tiffany loses a baby. A wallcreeper is hurt in the accident, and they take it back home with them.

And that's pretty much all we hear about the wallcreeper. It drops from sight soon enough, which makes one wonder at the title.

The two seem to have an open marriage, and Tiffany engages in desultory sex with a variety of uninspiring partners. Zink can't write a sex scene to save her life, so this might not have been a wise plot element for her to go with. The two of them get involved in environmental protests for obscure and unconvincing reasons, and the actions they choose to take are, frankly, ridiculous. The ending is manipulative and contrived.

This book really is terrible. ( )

Can't say I really understood the book but it was short and very funny in spots. Would like to read more by this author. ( )

Nell Zink seems like an interesting writer, so I thought I'd begin at the beginning with her first novel. I have never read Franzen, but I can't see WHY Zink is Franzen's protege, other than the billion birds mentioned in 'The Wallcreeper'. (Somehow I thought the title "wallcreeper" had something to do with a different name for "wallflower", but with a worse, creepier connotation or something, blame that on the cover, I guess. I never knew that wallcreeper was a bird.) Which speaks to a larger theme that I can read this and notice that Zink is a VERY smart writer -- but smart as in she might be writing something that goes way over my head and the heads of most readers. Or the book just doesn't really make sense to anyone? Even Zink? I don't see the purpose of the book or what it was trying to do. I would set this book on the shelf beside 'The Visitors' by Jessi Jezewska Stevens - both books share the same spirit, and both are also very smart and go over my head. But 'The Visitors' is THE BEST. try it. ( )