NW
A Novel
-
-
3.6 • 131 Ratings
-
-
- $5.99
Publisher Description
A 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • One of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2012 • One of TIME's Top 10 Fiction Books of 2012 • One of The Wall Street Journal's Best 10 Fiction Books of 2012 • A New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book of 2012
“[NW] is that rare thing, a book that is radical and passionate and real.” —Anne Enright, The New York Times Book Review
“A triumph . . . As Smith threads together her characters' inner and outer worlds, every sentence sings.” —The Guardian
“A powerful portrait of class and identity in multicultural London.” —Entertainment Weekly
Set in northwest London, Zadie Smith’s brilliant tragicomic novel follows four locals—Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan—as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. In private houses and public parks, at work and at play, these Londoners inhabit a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end. Depicting the modern urban zone—familiar to city-dwellers everywhere—NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Even as longtime fans of Zadie Smith's seriocomic, multicultural stories of London, we were blown away by the emotional richness and complex artistry of this novel. Named for the downtrodden area that connects its characters, NW spends long, intimate stretches exploring everyday lives that feel compellingly real. Smith reveals her characters—like Leah, who’s clawed her way to the middle class but remains permanently uneasy, or Felix, who’s just kicked drugs but still finds ways to sabotage himself—through brilliant, nonlinear fragments. Their interrupted thoughts and half-finished conversations somehow fit together perfectly.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The reader first meets Leah Hanwell at her most vulnerable (some might say gullible): at home, when the doorbell rings and in tumbles a desperate, unknown but not unfamiliar woman, pleading for money, which Leah provides. Although this incident soon fades into an awkward anecdote shared later at awkward gatherings, it introduces the framework of Smith's (White Teeth) excellent and captivating new novel, in which the lines dividing neighbors from strangers are not always clear or permanent. The book takes place in NW London, where characters intersect and circumvent one another's lives and, in the process, expose their ethnic distinctions and class transformations, their relationships and their secrets. Leah's childhood best friend Natalie Blake (formerly Keisha Blake) eventually becomes the primary focus and the contrast between the two women allows for some of the book's most compelling insights, namely the inevitability of vs. the disinterest in becoming a mother, which Natalie has done and Leah decisively has not. The book's middle section introduces Felix Cooper, a friend of neither woman, but whose fate will affect them both. Smith's masterful ability to suspend all these bits and parts in the amber which is London refracts light, history, and the humane beauty of seeing everything at once.
Customer Reviews
London Town
In NW Zadie Smith writes in a very different style from her previous books. It’s much darker for sure — her marvelous sense of humor is in the background. But the main stylistic difference is the detour she takes from more traditional storytelling approaches to something much more experimental. On the whole I thought it worked. It was a hard book to read in some ways. The characters are pretty miserable. But I cared about them and for the most part they felt authentic to me even though some of their reactions to things seemed extreme.
Highly recommend
Smith is a masterful storyteller. Her novels never fail to consume me--the kind of books you are eager to fill any empty time with. NW has a forward momentum that also folds in beautiful, sometimes heart-breaking, moments of insight about how we are continually coming into ourselves, how we implicate and hurt others in the process, and how connected we really are even when it feels otherwise. Read NW, White Teeth, and On Beauty--each will pull you completely in, resonate & leave their own distinct mark long after the final page.
Unusual style
I found the author’s voice a very unusual style that was hard for me to follow.