#WriterCrushWednesday with Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith, where do we start? It’s something about how you changed your name from Sadie to Zadie when you were 14, opting for the less-common and sharper “zed”, that seems so bad-ass. While the rest of us were trying to figure out what to do with ourselves after graduating college, you were publishing your first novel. Your wit and elegant lines lure us in, but your observations of race, religion, cultural identity, and how we relate to the world leave us positively drooling for more. With complex, vibrant, and diverse characters, your reflection of life and your vision of the world is dynamic and insightful. We love how you keep it real, but add a hint of magicalism. Your embrace of the London state of mind (and vernacular) creates fictional universes that are deliciously, realistically conceivable. You do all this with a grace and skill that sweeps us off our feet. You are so good, and we got it bad.
Swing Time: This marks the first novel Smith has written in first person. Two young girls who dream of being dancers connect almost subconsciously when they meet in dance class. But only one seems to have the skill to make it. As their friendship grows, so too do their feelings of jealousy toward each other, and though the duo abruptly parts ways, they never truly forget each other. Our narrator goes on to work for international pop star Aimee (think Beyonce), while her friend Tracey dances as a chorus girl on The West End. Ruminating on rhythm, movement, and female friendships, Swing Time explores race, privilege, and identify shifting across time and space.
NW: Four northwest Londoners try to navigate life as adults in the ever complex city, teeming with an urban edge that will seem quite familiar to city-dwellers. Each character written expertly in their own unique voice, they explore marriage, friendship, family and whether or not to take the high road. Smith creates fictional circumstances in a very real London in NW that allows readers a diverse environment to explore while reading.
On Beauty: Two different families become ever more intertwined despite themselves. Howard Besley, a university professor in Wellington (a fictional town near Boston), rivals with ultra-conservative Monty Kipps residing in Britain. Even across an ocean, the families battle out cultural differences. After unlikely coincidences unite Besley’s son and Kipps’ daughter to be married, Kipps moves his family to Wellington and becomes a guest lecturer at Besley’s university. While the men’s rivalry seems to grow, their wives surprisingly find kindred spirits in each other. Smith’s deadpan wit rings true in this homage to E.M. Forster’s Howards End.
The Autograph Man: As a child, Londoner Alex-Li Tandem’s father took him and two friends to a pro-wrestling match, when his father abruptly died from a heart attack while they were waiting in line for an autograph. Flash forward to 27-year-old Alex, who is an autograph trader, working in a world that highly values symbols, signs and paper. His romantic relationship is as unsteady as his faith in any religion. It seems Alex’s only certainty is his need for the signature of one reclusive former movie star by the name of Kitty Alexander. His search for this treasure takes him to New York, meeting one bold personality after another along the way.
White Teeth: This debut novel was published when Smith was just 24 years old. Smith won the Guardian First Book Award and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, just to name a few. White Teeth catches up with Archie Jones (English) and Samad Iqbal (Bengali) many years after they first meet during WWII and follows them through the next 50 years of their lives.
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