NW

Starred review from September 10, 2012
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. Agent: Georgia Garrett, Rogers, Coleridge and White.

August 15, 2012
A wildly ambitious jigsaw puzzle of a novel, one that shuffles pieces of chronology, identity, ethnicity and tone, undermining cohesion and narrative momentum as it attempts to encompass a London neighborhood that is both fixed and fluid. Many of Smith's strengths as a writer are journalistic--a keen eye for significant detail, ear for speech inflections, appreciation for cultural signifiers and distinctions--as she demonstrated in her previous collection (Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays, 2009). Yet, she first earned renown as a novelist with her breakthrough debut (White Teeth, 2000), and her fourth novel (first in six years) finds her challenging herself and the reader like never before. The title refers to "North West London, a dinky part of it you've never heard of called Willesden, and...you'd be wrong to dismiss it actually because actually it's very interesting, very 'diverse.' Lord, what a word." What initially seems to be a comedy of manners, involving two women who have been lifelong friends but now feel a distance in the disparity of their social standing (the one raised poorer by a Caribbean mother has done far better than the middle-class Caucasian), ultimately turns darker with abortion, murder, drug addiction and the possibility of a suicide. Much of the drama pivots on chance encounters (or fate?), making the plot difficult to summarize and even a protagonist hard to pinpoint. Each of the book's parts also has a very different structure, ranging from very short chapters to an extended narrative interlude to numbered sections that might be as short as a paragraph or a page. The pivotal figure in the novel goes by two different names and has no fixed identity (other than her professional achievement as a barrister), and she doesn't begin to tell the back story that dominates the novel's second half until the first half concludes (it highlights different characters). "At some point we became aware of being 'modern, ' of changing fast," interjects the author, who has written a novel so modern that nothing flows or fits together in the conventional sense, but whose voice remains so engaging and insights so incisive that fans will persevere to make of it what they will. Smith takes big risks here, but some might need to read this twice before all the pieces fit together, and more conventionally minded readers might abandon it in frustration.

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April 1, 2012

It's been seven years since Smith last published a novel, so we're all really chaffing to read this one. NW stands for northwest, that is, northwest London, where a group of friends living on an estate make their way through school and on to adulthood, staying more or less true to their ideals.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 15, 2012
In her first novel since On Beauty (2005), Smith draws on her deepening social and psychological acuity and her intimacy with North West London to portray a quartet of struggling men and women linked by blood, place, affinity, and chance. Of Jamaican descent, Keisha, who renames herself Natalie, is smart, disciplined, ambitious, and duplicitous. Anglo Leah is unconventional, fearful, compassionate, and devious. They were close growing up together in public housing but are now leading somewhat divergent lives. Natalie is a corporate lawyer with a wealthy husband, two children, and a big, flashy house. Leah works for a not-for-profit organization and is married to a sweet French African hairdresser. As girls, they had crushes on schoolmate Nathan; now he's mired in drugs, violence, and rage. Noble and ambitious biracial Felix crosses their paths just as his radiant integrity and kindness become liabilities. With exceptional discernment, wit, empathy, and artistry, Smith creates a breathtakingly intricate mesh of audible and interior voices while parsing family relationships, class and racial divides, marriage, and friendship. In this quintessential twenty-first-century urban novel depicting a vibrant, volatile multicultural world, Smith calibrates the gravitational forces of need and desire, brutality and succor, randomness and design, dissonance and harmony, and illuminates both heartbreaking and affirming truths about the paradoxes of human complexity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

February 25, 2013
In the hands of Smith, Northwest London—the postcode area that gives her fourth novel its title—is more than just a setting: told in shifting perspectives of its lifelong residents, NW becomes a character in its own right. Working class, downtrodden, with an undercurrent of hopelessness and violence, this borough of London is home to Leah, Felix, Natalie, and Nathan, Smith’s four focal characters, each one facing a conflict of identity. So many of the societal and class differences in NW are shown through nuances of voice, diction, and accent. And in this audio edition, narrators Don Gilet and Karen Bryson excel, capturing the subtleties of the many fluid dialectics in Northwest London spoken by immigrants and natives alike. The strong performances of and seamless interplay between Gilet and Bryson deftly capture the gritty day-to-day life of NW. A Penguin hardcover.

Starred review from September 15, 2012

Partway through this charged onslaught of a novel, Smith's first in the seven years since On Beauty, a young tough refusing to put out a cigarette on a children's playground says, "You can't really chat to me. I'm Hackney, so," referring to the London borough. Although it gets a rise from his challenger, the comment clarifies Smith's story. Geography is destiny, and NW (North West London), with its housing projects and increasingly marginalized community, is the force shaping the narrative. Natalie Blake (nee Keisha) grew up there but has worked hard, tugged at her Afro-Caribbean roots, and become a lawyer; friend Leah, who also got a degree (as a state-school wild card) and is now "the only white girl on [Council's] Fund Distribution Team," doesn't want to move on. They circle warily, and Natalie eventually circles back, even as other characters--ambitious Felix and heartthrob Nathan, now in the gutter--wash through the you-are-there writing. VERDICT Told in numbered, run-on chapters that occasionally offer an aphorism or poetry, Smith's elliptical prose initially frustrates, then mesmerizes; it's a brilliant, daring way to deliver real lives--and, in the end, an emotional knockout. [See Prepub Alert, 3/5/12.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.