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3.52 AVERAGE
3.52 AVERAGE
Set in northwest London, very much a character itself, NW is the story of four people who grew up in a housing estate, and what they make of their lives. It is experimental in style - spare, stream of consciousness, staccato; skimming the surface and diving deep into who these characters are. It's about London, class, race, how people are perceived, how they really are, and all that contributes to a person's self, and place in the world.
Four may seem an unusually high score for a book that I literally had to drag my way through the first third of. It’s this month’s book club choice and I’d heard from fellow readers that it was a chore. I have to admit that I initially found it was too. I found her style of writing rather distracting and I just wasn’t engaging with the plot or characters. But then things started to change, I was immersed and I couldn’t put it down.
It’s an interesting commentary about life in NW London, well a small part of NW London with its council houses, unemployment, drug culture, crime rate, poverty etc., but also it’s an observation of people and what they (we) are like - how we grapple with things such as ‘moving forward’ with our lives or how we portray ourselves vs who we really are.
The high score also because she has interesting style of writing, that changes with each of the five sections of the book, and her use of language too. She’s a confident and adventurous writer that throws in all these different ways of telling a story. And it works, really well I think.
So, ultimately I’d say this book will probably not be, for most, love at first page but stick with it.
It's also inspired me to go back to her previous novel White Teeth, which I couldn't get into at first either.
It’s an interesting commentary about life in NW London, well a small part of NW London with its council houses, unemployment, drug culture, crime rate, poverty etc., but also it’s an observation of people and what they (we) are like - how we grapple with things such as ‘moving forward’ with our lives or how we portray ourselves vs who we really are.
The high score also because she has interesting style of writing, that changes with each of the five sections of the book, and her use of language too. She’s a confident and adventurous writer that throws in all these different ways of telling a story. And it works, really well I think.
So, ultimately I’d say this book will probably not be, for most, love at first page but stick with it.
It's also inspired me to go back to her previous novel White Teeth, which I couldn't get into at first either.
I was pretty excited to read Zadie Smith's latest. Unfortunately I was underwhelmed. I was kind of left feeling like, "That's it??" The two central characters come across as incredibly shallow and kind of pathetic. Is that the point? Also, the Felix character doesn't really fit into the book, I didn't understand the purpose of the one section about him since the other 3 characters were more or less related. Altogether, a big effort but didn't leave me satisfied.
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
N-W follows the lives of several characters who grew up in the Northwest of London. It expands on the lives they build for themselves after growing up in poverty, and how they cope as adults. This region of London functions, sort of, as another character in the novel, but one treated as universal, as if it needn't be explained to the reader — N-W standing in for any other depressed region; however, since it is described as if the reader knows it intimately, I found it more impenetrable than universal.
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Addiction, Racism, Toxic relationship, Violence, Murder
Minor: Suicide attempt
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
How much do I love Zadie Smith?
Her writing seems to get better with age. NW takes on a bit of a Woolfish stream of consciousness, fragmented writing that follows several inhabitants of NW, mainly: Leah, Keisha, and Felix. By far, my favorite part of the book was about the last half, which follows Keisha and begins with the story of her friendship with Leah, all the way up to present events.
Smith is an unbelievably talented writer. Each sentence is finely tuned, like biting into a hot pastry and savoring each bite.
Her writing seems to get better with age. NW takes on a bit of a Woolfish stream of consciousness, fragmented writing that follows several inhabitants of NW, mainly: Leah, Keisha, and Felix. By far, my favorite part of the book was about the last half, which follows Keisha and begins with the story of her friendship with Leah, all the way up to present events.
Smith is an unbelievably talented writer. Each sentence is finely tuned, like biting into a hot pastry and savoring each bite.
Sometimes when I’ve finished reading a book and I express an opinion about it, I find myself completely at olds with everyone else. Zadie Smith’s NWis a case in point.
This book — Smith’s fourth novel — is widely lauded and regarded as her finest work. Everyone I follow on Twitter seems to love it. But I struggled with it and found it a chore to read — in fact, I only forced myself to finish it because it had been chosen for my book group and I wanted to be able to take part in the discussion. If I had chosen the novel of my own accord I doubt I would have continued beyond the first chapter.
Fortunately, it’s the kind of novel that actually benefits from discussion, because after my book group meeting I found myself warming to it a bit more than I had first thought, but that doesn’t mean to say I liked NW; I didn’t.
The story is set in the London postcode of NW, an impoverished part north of the river, and focuses on four characters — Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan — who grew up on the same council estate and are now trying to make their way as 30-something adults.
It mainly revolves around Leah and Keisha, who were once best friends but now live lives that couldn’t be more different. Leah, a white Irish girl, has married an exotic-looking black French/Algerian — the kind of man all her black colleagues lust after — and is feeling the pressure of beginning a family she doesn’t yet want, probably because she rails against the idea of bringing up a child in the same circumstances in which she was raised; while Keisha, who has reinvented herself as Natalie, is a successful black barrister with two children but finds married life so dull she has kinky sex with other couples she tracks down on the internet.
Meanwhile, Nathan, the good-looking boy Leah had a crush on at school, is living on the streets and illegally reselling tube tickets to scrape together a bit of money to feed his crack habit. Felix, the fourth character, is a bit of a red herring — he’s not known to Leah or Keisha — but his world closely orbits their’s and, eventually, collides with Nathan’s.
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.
This book — Smith’s fourth novel — is widely lauded and regarded as her finest work. Everyone I follow on Twitter seems to love it. But I struggled with it and found it a chore to read — in fact, I only forced myself to finish it because it had been chosen for my book group and I wanted to be able to take part in the discussion. If I had chosen the novel of my own accord I doubt I would have continued beyond the first chapter.
Fortunately, it’s the kind of novel that actually benefits from discussion, because after my book group meeting I found myself warming to it a bit more than I had first thought, but that doesn’t mean to say I liked NW; I didn’t.
The story is set in the London postcode of NW, an impoverished part north of the river, and focuses on four characters — Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan — who grew up on the same council estate and are now trying to make their way as 30-something adults.
It mainly revolves around Leah and Keisha, who were once best friends but now live lives that couldn’t be more different. Leah, a white Irish girl, has married an exotic-looking black French/Algerian — the kind of man all her black colleagues lust after — and is feeling the pressure of beginning a family she doesn’t yet want, probably because she rails against the idea of bringing up a child in the same circumstances in which she was raised; while Keisha, who has reinvented herself as Natalie, is a successful black barrister with two children but finds married life so dull she has kinky sex with other couples she tracks down on the internet.
Meanwhile, Nathan, the good-looking boy Leah had a crush on at school, is living on the streets and illegally reselling tube tickets to scrape together a bit of money to feed his crack habit. Felix, the fourth character, is a bit of a red herring — he’s not known to Leah or Keisha — but his world closely orbits their’s and, eventually, collides with Nathan’s.
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes