NW shows how singular Smith's style is--singular in the way the style of a Wes Anderson film is singular, only 1000 times less twee--yet it's not show-offy. It's as if she's really writing for the reader, not for her ego, though she's so smart her intelligence gets embedded in the prose as a sort of lit-ego. Because just writing a review of NW for Shelf Awareness wasn't enough, I've been listening to a bunch of Zadie Smith podcasts, and I finally found the best one at Nikesh Shukla's Subaltern podcast. I reviewed it over at Litagogo with links for the web and iTunes. If you're remotely a fan of Smith's, you should go listen to it. I'm going to subscribe to Shukla's podcast, too, because his line-up looks great and because he coined the expression "podamuse bouche." *NW does have a perfect middle--the Felix section--which I'm going to re-read as soon as I get caught up on my deadlines oh yeah. |
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