NW

NW
by Zadie Smith
read: 2020

NW contains three sections, each in a different voice corresponding to a major character, and each in a distinct style, similar to The Sound and the Fury or As I Lay Dying. But I found that style difficult to get into with Faulkner, and I similarly found NW less approachable than Zadie Smith's other work.

On Beauty

On Beauty
by Zadie Smith
read: circa 2006
Guardian 1000 Novels, Orange Prize

Zadie Smith is a great writer, but On Beauty felt like paint-by-numbers.  Professor Amy Hungerford's lecture on the identity plot made me realize what I had found flat about the book.  While White Teeth was a fun look at the different iterations of culture and identity that permeate British society, On Beauty just felt like the same thing re-scrambled.  "I'll set it in America this time!  But the man will be English-born.  And we'll have a Trinidadian family instead of an Indian one."  Smith's prose is still strong, inventive and witty, so the novel is worth reading, but I would have found it more original if I hadn't read one of her books before.

The Autograph Man

The Autograph Man
by Zadie Smith
read: circa 2003

I read The Autograph Man before White Teeth, and while the latter got a lot more critical acclaim, I enjoyed the former more.  I think it's me; I read The Autograph Man at a time when I was pretty lost, having just graduated college and moved back home, so adrift protagonist Alex-Li Tandem resonated with me.  I might find him a whiny loser if I re-read the book now.

White Teeth

White Teeth
by Zadie Smith
read: circa 2004
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels, James Tait Black Memorial Prize

White Teeth is an example of a modern "identity plot" novel.  The characters are all from different ethnic and religious backgrounds and upbringings - white British, Jamaican Jehovah's Witness, Bangladeshi Islam, Jewish, and mixed race and religion - and they all seem to be trying to figure out how they fit in to modern English society.  It's almost an identity novel for England itself.  What is England in this world where being British can mean so many different things?