RaveThe MillionsVeselka gives all her characters space to exist on their own terms. If you’ll excuse a writing workshop cliché, she gives them the rope, and while some characters end up hanging themselves, others use it to climb upward instead. These are, in some ways, pretty reprehensible people (even Della isn’t necessarily someone you’d want to have over for dinner with the family), but the characters are all rendered with respect and humanity that is more than admirable in a literary and media culture that sometimes seems overly prone to cynicism and biting sarcasm. But perhaps the thing most remarkable about Veselka’s novel is the same thing that makes it such a tough book to review. I’m afraid to ruin the mystery. In much of so-called literary fiction, plot plays second fiddle to character and voice and a thousand other immaterial things. In Zazen, on the other hand, Veselka grabs plot by the lapels and brings it to the forefront of the book without sacrificing the effectiveness of the more ethereal aspects of good fiction. Though I’ve been trained to read for language, sound, beauty, and philosophy, and this novel has plenty of all, I was just as fascinated by the intricate turns the narrative took as it progressed, just as wowed by material revelations in the story that wouldn’t have stood out as clearly in other literary novels.
