Swing Time
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3.8 • 16 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times bestseller
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction
Finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize for Fiction
2017 Man Booker Prize Longlist
An ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from northwest London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty
Two brown girls dream of being dancers--but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, about what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early twenties, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either.
Dazzlingly energetic and deeply human, Swing Time is a story about friendship and music and stubborn roots, about how we are shaped by these things and how we can survive them. Moving from northwest London to West Africa, it is an exuberant dance to the music of time.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We fell into a trance each time we picked up Zadie Smith’s novel about female friendship, racial identity, and the magic of dance. Swing Time is narrated by a biracial Londoner from grade school into adulthood. Self-conscious and curious, she scrutinizes her own belief systems and motivations, as well as those of the most important figures in her life—her parents, her brash childhood friend Tracey, and a pop superstar named Aimee. Smith’s heroine gets wrapped up in major drama, but she stays cool and watchful…not unlike her author.
