Zadie Smith, Then and Now

I have long admired the author Zadie Smith; I recall absolutely loving On Beauty and (not quite as much) White Teeth.  I eagerly dove into her latest novel: NW.  Unfortunately, I was not totally taken with it.

The story focuses on four youngish adults living in London (although the four characters do not enter equally into the story; much heavier emphasis is given to two of them).  These characters have a shared background of growing up in a London "council estate".  In England, that's the name public housing operates under.  "NW" refers to the northwest section of housing in the particular council estate of their childhood.

Although I still think Smith is a good writer, this novel felt superficial.  In the jacket blurb is the statement "NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself." "Mercurial encounters" is right.  The story just never dives beneath these quick, surface "drop-ins" on the characters.  One good-sized chunk of the novel is a series of 185  (really!) one and two paragraph vignettes featuring two of the main characters at different times in their lives.  I disliked it intensely; it felt like lazy writing as in "I can't figure out how to connect all of this so I'll just number each idea separately and write a couple of paragraphs." Smith also employs gimmicky text preferences for dialog that I found distracting and annoying. So...very clearly, not a favorite read.

I couldn't help but compare it to JK Rowling's Casual Vacancy, since the novels share some of the same story components: council estate living versus middle class and all the life-determining (in most cases) effects/consequences environment has on human development.  Rowling's novel was much more affecting; she brought the reader deeply into her characters' lives and left a lasting impression on this reader, at least.

But still...Zadie Smith!  What happened?  Did I misremember how great I thought your earlier novels were?  I decided to re-read White Teeth, her debut published in 2000, to determine whether or not I was recalling my fondness for it correctly.  The good news: White Teeth is a a terrific novel and if you've not read it, you should!

I still hold On Beauty (2005) in very high esteem and feel that, so far, this has been her ultimate achievement.  The story follows the lives of a mixed-race British/American family living in the United States and England. The nature of beauty, cultural and ethnic differences and diverse political agendas all make for an engaging story. 
 
Bottom line: if you're thinking about reading NW but haven't read either of her earlier works, go for the earlier ones and then skip NW.