Nell Zink's MISLAID & Phaedra Patrick's THE CURIOUS CHARMS OF ARTHUR PEPPER, Happy endings from estranged beginnings
Zaniness and wisdom in farcical settings are in short supply in new fiction, especially where they are employed to create a fun and meaningful experience for readers. THE CURIOUS CHARMS OF ARTHUR PEPPER (MIRA/Harlequin) and MISLAID (Harper Collins) fill this eccentric category. Both novels hearken back to classics. Phaedra Patrick's ARTHUR PEPPER, like Alice, enters a wonderland of strange adventures linked to enigmatic objects and seemingly crazy characters, though a wonder of his land is that it's been hidden for decades behind his daily life. Nell Zinc's MISLAID seems a descendant of Mark Twain's The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson, a send-up of class and race in a southern town, where two babies (like his earlier The Prince and the Pauper) are switched at birth. Zinc's mad-cap novel, also a political send-up of race and class in the south, differs most in that it's driven by gender ambiguity. In Twain, gender hasn't a starring role. In both novels t...