NW

At points the form or lack of such seemed almost too much but the final bit saved it all for me. Will likely follow Zadie wherever she takes us all.

One sentence synopsis... A slice of North West London structured around the evolving lives of two best friends.

Read it if you like... beautiful writing and use of language - as with all Smith novels. The turns of phrase and insights make the book worth a read but the ending let it down and some secondary characters could have been more filled out.

Dream casting... Nathalie Emmanuel as Keisha/Natalie and Rose Leslie as Leah. This may be one of my best casting decisions yet. They should remake the BBC adaptation with these choices.

Really enjoyed the last third much more than the beginning, but mostly found this to be a little hard to follow and muddled.

I loved this book.

I loved “White Teeth” but with genius debuts you never know if the experience will be repeated. Her second “Autograph Man” I didn't really enjoy, too much abstruse Kabbalah and obscure symbolism, trying too hard.
The third “on Beauty” i enjoyed but found a bit of a slog in parts, maybe again writing too many words, too much Writing.

This one is a masterpiece.Dialogue driven, every word counts to drive the story on. Each part, as in poetry, has resonances and undercurrents, but none of it seems contrived, it looks effortless. A joy.

I hadn‰ЫЄt been particularly looking forward to this book‰ЫЄs release this September but picked it up on a whim in the bookstore because I‰ЫЄve enjoyed her previous novels and am (or have pretensions of being) interested in famous contemporary female novelists, etc. etc. I was also intrigued by the nonsensical vibe of the first chapter – I usually don‰ЫЄt like that kind of thing but from Zadie Smith I thought I could handle it. It was easier to read than I expected. I really liked how the friendship between Leah and Natalie slowly became clear over the course of the novel, and how closely we became caught up in their concerns, in growing into women and becoming different from those around them. The section on Felix seemed to pull too far away from the central Leah-Natalie story. But I felt like we spent too much time with Natalie by the end of the book and would‰ЫЄve liked to know more about Leah to sort of come full circle with their friendship. And that‰ЫЄs me critiquing Zadie Smith for how she structured her novel, ha ha! Slinking back to my mudhole.

This type of writing style is not really for me, I was invested in the characters though