(no subject)

Instead of any of those books I mentioned, I picked up today at the library Zadie Smith's new one, NW.


Um...


Yes, I've read the first five chapters and all I can say is Um...




Zadie Smith appears to be doing a thing again. First glance guess was that it might be Zadie Smith doing Thomas Hardy as filtered through Joyce and Eliot. The opening paragraph is a landscape painting like something out of Hardy, except that the landscape she's painting is a North London suburb. "The fat sun stalls by the phone masts. Anti-climb paint turns sulfurous on school gates and lampposts." Holy shit is the language unsettlingly beautiful.

I don't know what to make of it. It's way more intimate than anything I've read by Smith before. Her perspective on her focal character is incredibly tight. There is no remove, no room for irony whatsoever. Not that accusing Smith of irony was ever a fair accusation, really. Still experimental, but unlike in past Smith novels I don't yet have the feeling that the experimentation is the point. She's not showing off here, just working hard to tell a story.

I'm going to have to keep reading and see how I feel about it.