Zadie Smith’s sprawling, splashy, rambunctious first novel, like the vision of London it conjures, is crammed full of immigrants and misfits, pubs and back alleys and dubious beauty parlors where a self-conscious half-Jamaican teenager can find solace in straightening treatments for her unruly hair. This particular teenager is just one of the quirky, vividly sketched figures to whom Smith introduces us, each one struggling to craft his or her own destiny in a city where racial, cultural, and religious identities are frighteningly malleable, where a womanizing, pot-smoking bad boy can transform overnight into a radical Muslim activist and the nerdy son of a geneticist can grow into an eco-terrorist dedicated to destroying his own father’s work. Deftly managing the many disparate plotlines that traverse the novel’s narrative space without shortchanging any of their colorful protagonists is no minor accomplishment, not least for an author as young as Smith, who started writing the novel while still a university student and was only 24 when it was published—and yet she pulls it off with aplomb.
Book Review by Anna Ziajka
