Review of "NW" by Zadie Smith

The novel is told in three voices:  two women who’ve grown up together in NW London and, between their separate sections of the book, a seemingly unrelated man who’s grown up in the same area and is trying to escape his past to make a better life. The two women have outwardly pulled themselves out of poverty, but Smith’s skill lies in showing the inner poverty of their lives; how external expectations keep them from even knowing what they really want from life, much less living the lives they want.

The first section, told through the eyes of Leah, is rough going. She’s depressed and lonely, feels trapped in her “happy” marriage and her respectable but boring job, and doesn’t want to have the child her husband craves so much. It’s only in the third section, told through her best friend Natalie’s eyes, that we see what kind of child Leah was: a empathic girl who becomes a rebel in high school, hangs out with artsy intellectuals, and flirts with lesbianism in college. And yet she ends up marrying a very conventional family man and living just a few doors down from the house where she grew up, in the same NW lower-class neighborhood.

Natalie’s story takes a different trajectory: she’s the little girl with a tough exterior who gets straight-A’s, goes to law school, puts in her requisite three years as a public defender, then takes a cushy job in a corporate law firm. She marries a rich, handsome, playboy banker and pops out two children, a boy and a girl, and seems to all outward appearances to have the perfect life. Except that inwardly, her life mirrors Leah’s more closely than she’s willing to admit.

The stories of these two women bracket the story of Felix, who as a black man, has a harder time making a success of his life. Whereas Leah (who’s white) and Natalie (who’s black) find it easier to climb the socioeconomic ladder, Smith reminds us that black men are viewed by all of society as inherently dangerous once they reach puberty. This applies even to Felix, whose name means “happy” and whose demeanor is always upbeat. He has a quick, creative mind, and is easily the most likable character in the book, yet he never gets a real break from anyone, except maybe his newest girlfriend, Grace. She’s presented in stark contrast to his former girlfriend, Annie, a drugged-out déclassé white woman who wants to support Felix’s work as a filmmaker, but whose drug habits pulled him down in the first place. As much as he loves Grace, Felix can’t easily let go of Annie, whose outlook on life, while more jaded, seems more realistic in the end.

In the fourth and final section, Smith artfully links together the three characters in a way that makes the reader feel as if you’ve been given the full tour of NW.

Overall, this book was fantastic, although a little hard to get into.  Once you reach Felix’s section, though, Smith hits her stride and there’s no turning back.