=book recently read: NW by Zadie Smith

This is the first book I've ever read by Zadie Smith. From what I gather, it's a bit different from her earlier books, less traditional. People who read and liked her earlier books and responded negatively to this one say that the narrative in "NW" is fragmented to the point of incomprehensibility and that "all the characters are unlikeable." 

To that I say, "Huh?!"

I didn't find the scattershot narrative in the main part of the book—185 short "chapters" in 155 pages—a problem to follow at all. The main storyline bracketing this middle section is neatly—perhaps even too neatly—tied up in the end. And though the characters were undeniably self-centered and self-important, I didn't find them to be particularly unlikable. They didn't seem any more or less unlikable than most people I know casually. Besides, how did this dumb idea creep into the collective mind of the mainstream reading public that the main characters of novels were supposed to be likable? You're not going camping for five months in the Himalayas with these people, for crissakes. You aren't having them babysit your children. 

Anyway, I don't have a ton of stuff to say about this book. It was okay. It was undeniably well-written. It's about two best friends—Leah (Irish) and Keisha/Natalie (Jamaican)—who grew up together in a rather drab section of London in the 80s/90s. They've more or less successfully transcended their grubby origins, but they feel a lot of guilt and low self-esteem that drags them at least halfway back to where they started. 

Ultimately, "NW" is a book about class consciousness and how hard—if not impossible—it is to completely escape your origins, how you never quite feel like you fit into the better world, the enriched life you've been taught to work hard and aspire to even if you should happen to beat the odds and "make it." 

As it happens, "NW" was nominated for a National Book Award (!) and was named one of the Ten Notable Books of the Year 2012 by the New York Times(!). Wow. I don't remember 2012 that well, except that, according to a misreading of Mayan prophecy popular at the time, it was the year that the world was supposed to end. That this book was considered one of the ten best published that year—or any year for that matter—rather surprises me. I mean, yes, it's smart, hip, and written by a literary "celebrity" with a very cool name (not the Smith part) but it really struck me as not much more than a very intelligent soap opera in book form. 

Okay, if that sounds a bit harsh, then let's say it's a novel of social manners, ala Martin Amis, perhaps, (without Amis's vitriolic panache and without, thankfully,  his tiresome male bravado) written as it is from the far more unique perspective of a woman and a minority to boot. NW therefore fills a double gap. But for me it just didn't pack the universal existential punch that I expect from serious literature. It is too much a novel of a particular time and place which, though I found it interesting in its particularly and "gritty" realism, just wasn't definitive enough, simply wasn't working on enough levels to make it memorable or moving on anything but a relatively superficial level. I'm always leery about "literature" that makes the New York Times bestseller list and "NW" more than anything else confirmed my instinctive distrust.