Mislaid (by Nell Zink)

I feel like I cannot improve upon this review. But I will try, because panning a book is fun!

I truly disliked this book. The writing is precious and mannered -- I kept visualizing the author as an MFA student who was very pleased with herself -- and the characters behave in zero ways that are recognizably human. The "satire" of race is completely nonexistent -- compare to something like The Sellout or The Good Lord Bird and you see how it fails. I care about the teenage characters marginally more than the adult characters, but they all seem like shadow puppets of people. There is no authenticity here.

My notes: "Characters and their choices seem implausible." "Do not care for writing style." "Ending fun but way too pat and again, implausible." "Dislike button."

 tl;dr: hated it.