NW by Zadie Smith
My rating: 4/5 cats
i think zadie smith is pretty good at writing.
for one thing, she has a real flair for location. i don’t recall having been to northwest london (directions are hard) but i feel like i can see it, through the eyes of her characters.
she captures the cadence and speech-patterns of a broad swathe of london’s immigrant denizens; irish, caribbean, caribbean-italian, algerian, maybe-indian, russian, tempered by the toughness of the council estates, smoothed out by education and desire, full of slang and peculiarities (and how cute is british slang, that so many of their words are exact opposites of ours; “estate”, “fanny” – it is like they are trying to be contrary) in a way that really brings her story to life and helps immerse the reader into her world.
this book is about so many things: love, race, the pursuit of and the definition of happiness,technology,perception; how people see us and how we wish to be seen, the embarrassments of youth, and the falling short of ideals and expectations.
viewed as a whole, it is maybe a little confounding – the portions are told in a variety of styles, down to the way that dialogue is broken up in the text. but i liked that – i didn’t find it distracting, and i always appreciate it when there is diversity in a book. it keeps the stories separate and fresh. natalie’s was my favorite part, told in little bite-sized chunks bouncing around in time, and revealing information about the other characters involved, but i definitely felt for all of the characters in this book, and i enjoyed getting into their heads.
the unifying thread tying the different narratives together is not as strong as i had hoped; usually in multi-perspective novels, i like when there is a BOOM where all the hints and bits coalesce and come together into an explosion of “ahhhhhh!”, but this was a more subtle connection. it was okay, but there wasn’t as intellectually satisfying a “linking moment” as some others i have read.
this book is very deceptive – it is a really fast read, but there are so many seemingly casual conversations and details that are doing so much work – important revelations are disguised as casual exchanges, and i love that, oh do i love that.
View Spoiler »issa good book.
you can have it soon.
