Henry Elinsky, the protagonist in Ben Dolnick’s first novel, “Zoology” (Vintage, 304 pages, $12.95 paper), is a would-be saxophonist casting about for purpose in life in a syrupy morass of freshman C’s and D’s at American University in Washington, D.C. He drops out, moves home for a bit and then decamps to New York City to find himself while sponging off his dermatologist brother David, who lives with his minimalist-artist girlfriend Lucy. Henry’s family life is peppered by acidly simmering parental disappointment and a clumsy pageant of dream girls. Little honesties about his direction in life never quite make it past the tongue.
He takes a job at the Tisch Children’s Zoo in Central Park, where stark and rote shoveling duties are the order of the day. His closest friends are the animals and the immigrant staff of David’s apartment building. One day, he meets an enigmatic Midwestern sylph named Margaret at the building’s swimming pool, and his attraction to her spawns a fantasy world that is the province of young men.
The uncertain rhythm of this life is upended when his father has a heart attack after a heated argument. There is a growing sense that David and Lucy don’t want Henry living with them anymore. Henry’s uncle predicts that the young man’s parents will divorce. And then the blackout of 2003 hits and an animal goes missing from the zoo.
In an era of devolved literature that concerns itself with young people whose parents have failed, “Zoology” presents a portrait of a young man yearning to journey into adulthood through fields of thorny and fragile emotions. His turns of phrase — blood in the water from a swimming accident is described as “an instant, terrifying cloud” — fall like brilliant autumn colors, layering upon one another.
