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A review by thechanelmuse
Swing Time by Zadie Smith
3.0
“A truth was being revealed to me: that I had always tried to attach myself to the light of other people, that I had never had any light of my own. I experienced myself as a kind of shadow.”
In Swing Time, readers travel through the perspective of a passive, unnamed narrator, swinging back and forth from her childhood friendship with Tracey, a fellow biracial dancer at a church in a working-class section of London, to their divergent yet tumultuous adulthoods. The narrator is fixed in the way she navigates through her life, trying to get a grip on her identity while being sucked into the lives of everyone else. The complexities of identity, race, class, cultures, friendships, family dynamics, and mother-daughter relationships are brought up throughout.
Zadie Smith has an exquisite writing style, but it can become too descriptive at times. This is the first book I’ve read by her, but it won't be the last.
In Swing Time, readers travel through the perspective of a passive, unnamed narrator, swinging back and forth from her childhood friendship with Tracey, a fellow biracial dancer at a church in a working-class section of London, to their divergent yet tumultuous adulthoods. The narrator is fixed in the way she navigates through her life, trying to get a grip on her identity while being sucked into the lives of everyone else. The complexities of identity, race, class, cultures, friendships, family dynamics, and mother-daughter relationships are brought up throughout.
Zadie Smith has an exquisite writing style, but it can become too descriptive at times. This is the first book I’ve read by her, but it won't be the last.