That [Nell] Zink trick—leaving you no safe place to stand—has an ethical as well as an aesthetic dimension. Everybody is muddled, self-righteous, and complacent, prone by turns to wild overstatement and understatement, slogging it out for the moral high ground in whatever eccentric place he or she can find it. The privileged flaunt their persecution complexes; the environmentalists and social-justice advocates are blithely compromised, though that doesn’t necessarily invalidate their critiques. Zink delights in setting up arguments in which both parties are right (or wrong). Usually, people manage to be wrong in several directions at once.

Lidija Haas, “Are You Kidding?”