After quite a while away from this blog I’m back, having had weeks of packing up one house, putting everything into storage, living at a friend’s house, moving into a new house and then unpacking everything again. Finally, the chaos has subsided and there’s time to blog about the books that have kept me going through all of that.
I’ve just finished reading N-W by Zadie Smith and after a slow start was completely gripped by it. Since the fabulous White Teeth, her debut novel back in 2000, launched her as a major new literary talent, I always look forward to her latest novel and enjoyed On Beauty, and less so The Autograph Man.
N-W is also a fantastically well written book that captures the essence of a time and of a part of London. It’s characters are so well developed – complicated, thoughtful, and caught between the world they grew up in and have dragged themselves out of, and the lives they have carefully built since. But, this being London, their old and new worlds co-exist geographically in a small area of north-west London (hence the title).
And after all that hard work of becoming adults, and creating what they thought they wanted, Leah and her friend Natalie (formerly known as Keisha) are left in their thirties struggling with the feeling of being imposters in their own lives.
One of the reasons I enjoyed the book so much was that I instantly recognised the temporal reference points – Zadie Smith is the same age as me and the characters she writes about had their adolescence defined by the same music and UK and world events as I did. It took me right back to days at my comprehensive school, road protests, University and then clubbing culture.
The writing is really excellent. It reminds you that most writing isn’t. And it completely transports you into another London that it’s then a shock to be ejected from when you reach the final page.
