NW by Zadie Smith

I have just read NW by Zadie Smith; in fact I have just read it for the second time. I watched the first in the series of FILM 2012 on the BBC and when they reviewed The Master the reviewer said I loved this film and when it had finished I wanted to watch it all over again; well with a book you can do that quite easily: you go back to page one – or back to 101 as they say in Los Angeles – and this is what I did.

I always knew Zadie Smith was a wonderful writer by reputation and I saw a dramatisation of her first novel, White Teeth, which I think was made by Channel 4 when I was in America.

I was attracted to it by the reviews; they mentioned that this novel could be put in to the same bag as Ulysses as it was written with the 'stream of consciousness' technique which James Joyce was famous for; he was also renowned for not using inverted commas to denote when someone is speaking; he used a dash; for example – Come in, he said.

Zadie uses them sometimes, uses the dash at others and sometimes doesn't use anything at all as in this passage:

The rain got heavy. They stopped in a pub's doorway, Jack Straw's Castle

  Them shoes are bait.

  They're not shoes, they're slippers.

  They're bait.

  What's wrong with them?

  Why they so red?

  I don't know. I think I like red.

  Yeah, but why they got to be so bright? Can't run can't hide.

  I'm not trying to hide. I don't think I'm hiding. Why are we hiding?

  Don't ask me.

  He sat down on the damp stone step. He rubbed at his eyes, sighed.

  Bet there's people that live in them woods, blud.

  On the Heath?

  Yeah. Deep in.

  Maybe. I really don't know.

See what I mean; it's quite easy to see who's doing the talking without the inverted commas or the dashes. I think James Joyce called them 'perverted commas' when the publishers of his first novel put them in. He ordered them to be removed by the 'sergeant at arms!!'

As well as Joyce calling them perverted commas they are also called quotation marks or speech marks

As I mentioned I was drawn to the novel by the reviews and I know that part of London a little bit, the part with the NW postal code: Willesdon, Kilburn, Notting Hill and the novel is about a few people who come from the Caldwell council estate and the lives they try to make for themselves in the nearby suburbs.

One of the leading characters, a black girl called Natalie who looks like Angela Basset, has become a barrister and in that passage above she is wandering, towards the end of the book, with Nathan who came from the same estate and is high on drugs and homeless.

He was a charmer when he was at school with a lot of girls fancying him.

Another character called Felix is a tragic character; we know what's going to happen to him before it happens but we have forgotten that we have been told so when it does happen it comes as a bit of a shock but . .. that's up to you to find out.

There is also the mystery of Chapter 37 – it comes between Chapter 11 & 12 and is on page 37. It starts off - Lying in bed next to a girl she loved, many years ago, discussing the number 37. Dylan is singing. The girl has a theory that 37 has a magic about it, we're compelled towards it.

It goes on to say that the number 37 is used in movies and poetry etc and that web sites discuss it (I don't know I haven't looked) and then, later in the book, she skips from Chapter 36 to 38 – the 37 bus also runs through NW by the way.

It isn't like Ulysses at all as it's not so dense or nearly as long; Ulysses is about 720 pages and NW about 295; but Zadie does write in a stream of consciousness as I think many writers do these days.

It's a kind of interior dialogue and the reader will know what the character is thinking all the time and once in a while the stream of consciousness will be interrupted by some external dialogue as someone might pass them in the street or they might order a pint in a bar.

You have to concentrate when reading it as you can miss bits – which I did about Felix the first time I read it – but if you are at one with the author it's a great experience in reading.

NW is set in the time leading up to the Notting Hill Carnival which is a Caribbean celebration that takes place once a year. There's Caribbean food, reggae and dancing but it also attracts trouble and the metropolitan police haven't quite learned how to handle it yet.

In the novel various people are getting ready for the big weekend, planning what they are going to wear and who they are going to dress up as and the mood of the novel reminded me of The Trouble With Harry by Jack Trevor Story.

It's a long time since I read it but that novel seemed to be set in the sun and NW seems to be too, even though it is set in London.

London gets very humid in the summer months and there is a pregnant woman on the tube who is sweating and in other scenes people are sitting out on their balconies playing music. A haziness and laziness is there all the time and now I'm going to put the book away and hoping to read it again one day.