NW by Zadie Smith

NW

by Zadie Smith

One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2012

Set in northwest London, Zadie Smith’s brilliant tragicomic novel follows four locals—Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan—as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. In private houses and public parks, at work and at play, these Londoners inhabit a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end. Depicting the modern urban zone—familiar to city-dwellers everywhere—NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself.

Reviewed by clementine on

4 of 5 stars

Share
Oh, this is a tricky one. I have a lot of conflicting thoughts on it! What I know for certain is that I liked it, but not nearly as much as Smith's first novel, White Teeth.

I found a lot to admire about Smith's writing. I really like her style; to me, it's the perfect balance - a bit poetic, but not flowery. Her dialogue is great; she signifies things like accent and class so well. She has a sardonic tone that I really like; the narrator is a bit cheeky, never taking things too seriously. Though the style and form of the novel shifts a bit with the different perspectives, this essential playfulness is retained throughout them all, and reconciles them believably. I really enjoyed the characters of Felix and Natalie. But I did not like Leah, whose perspective starts the novel - I found her uninteresting and unlikeable. And by the end, I felt a bit ripped off, because usually multi-strand novels like this are my shit precisely because of how seamlessly all the narratives converge at the end. But this novel just sort of ended. I don't mind an ambiguous ending, or one that just ends in a general sense of ennui without any real development (as is the case here). That's fine. It just seemed... anticlimactic, especially given the narrative structure, which sort of begs for some sort of revelation related to all the strands. And I felt like we were denied that, unfortunately. Which is such a shame, because White Teeth is such a great example of a novel with an ensemble cast that was just magical.

So, I really appreciate Smith's technical skill here, but I didn't love the story itself. I think if this had been the first of her novels I'd read, I might not be inspired to pick up any more. But I did love White Teeth so much, so I'll press on with her.

Last modified on

Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 14 January, 2018: Finished reading
  • 14 January, 2018: Reviewed