The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

UK Edition
Publication Date: November 15, 2016


US Edition
Publication Date: November 15, 2016

A mixed book – much of the writing is outstanding and the Tracy/narrator relationship a clear cope of the relationship in the Neapolitan tales, but this time interwoven with questions of race, class, and celebrity in modern England and the wider world.

Dance is a constant theme throughout as is cultural clash and cultural appropriation – particularly the interactions between races over time and the subjugation of blacks to whites (the village is close to a famous slave island, Tracy and the narrator are obsessed with black dancers appearing in old film musicals – only over time realising the sidelined and stereotyped role they often played).

The character of Aimee and the African scenes take the book away from the familiar and thus reduce the resonance and relevance of much of what is happening.

A topic I care little about (dance), a setting I don't relate to (celebrities), a narrative that switches time and location every few pages ("Moving and rearranging things to create the greatest impact"), all this should make it easy for me to dismiss this book. The opposite is the case, and I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up winning the Booker.
While we slowly learn about the characters through many little episodes, a larger theme emerges: That of how they (and we) are controlled, and how this control creates images of ourselves that will haunt us for the rest of our lives.

Anya - thanks, those thoughts are very helpful.

I could see Zadie Smith wanted me to ask those questions but the novel itself didn't make me do so. One of those where I got more from reading detailed reviews / interviews that the novel itself.

I think the main problem for me was that this was all mixed in the story of Aimee. Which I not only didn't find that interesting but also struggled with the fact that it's clearly a lightly fictionalised version of Madonna: is one supposed to take it as a commentary/satire on the real person (names changed more for legal reasons) or only to think of Aimee as the character in the pages of the novel?

This faux realism caused me issues generally - MTV becomes NTV, her mother is the MP for Brent West (Brent East exists and Brent Central but not West), David Icke features as influencing Tracey's world view but isn't named.

I would have rather read more about the real-life Jeni Le-gon which was the most interesting part for me, and reminded me of how Ali Smith uses Pauline Boty in Autumn. But Smith rather underplays her own material with a simple brain dump of things the narrator learned about Le-gon.

I always enjoy Smith's books - this is my 5th - but I wouldn't put this even close to the shortlist this year.

I am about to read this for the second time. My thoughts first time round were similar to yours Paul although I did like the (what seemed to me) clear Ferrante inspiration.

When I first read it it was immediately on publication so there were few interviews around. Can you point us at any interviews you found helpful.

Gumble's Yard wrote: "When I first read it it was immediately on publication so there were few interviews around. Can you point us at any interviews you found helpful."

As I have posted elsewhere the first rule for any author is to see if Eleanor Wachtel has interviewed them:

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandcom...

Also generally I find Zadie Smith's essays more illuminating than her novels (although I have read 5 novels). E.g. her take on Brexit http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/... touches on some of the themes (and is more balanced than Ali Smith's one in Autumn).

e.g. to Wachtel...

[Musicals] are a mixture of the sublime and the obviously awful — terrible plots, offensive routines. I don't know why I'm attracted to that mix of form. It's obviously much cooler and more sensible to be attracted to perfect form. But something about perfect form repels me. My novels are like that too — I know they should be slim and controlled, but instead they're this ragbag.

Blemishes on a novels like references to contemporaries fade over the years. I don't think Swing Time is about Aimee or stardom in general, but about how our lives are formed, influenced, restricted, and how we sometimes react quite violently to return hurt. Take this passage for instance:
"...once these boyfriends had been formally assigned we stood solemnly with them in the playground in the thin winter sun, hand in hand..."
Vignettes like these fit as recurring themes together into a more universal question, which is expressed much later, talking about Aimee's adopted baby:
"It’s a question of what love gives you the right to do."
This could of course be quite banal, but it isn't, because it is being addressed in the timely context of people who are suddenly empowered without quite knowing how to deal with it.

Surely Autumn is also an offender here with its rather one dimensional view on Brexit shoehorned in.

Buy wait until you read the Ministry of Utmost Happiness before you judge what it means for a novel to pack too much in.

Of course Solar Bones and Reservoir 13 have been criticised (although I would certainly not agree) for not having enough going on.

Aimee doesn't seem so much a reference to Madonna as a complete satire (Ray of Light becomes Illuminated etc).

There is a lot of good stuff here but it could do with half the book being deleted - indeed a mixture of the sublime and the obviously awful as she says of musicals.

I hate to appear thick, but I don't understand the first sentence of chapter one!

If all the Saturdays of 1982 can be thought of as one day, I met Tracey at ten a.m. on that Saturday

What?

I assumed it was an artistic one of saying

"I met Tracey at 10am each Saturday in 1982 - I don't particularly remember specifically the date of the first time I met her, but in any case we got to know each other gradually so that first time isn't so important."

Or perhaps it is a hidden reference to a Madonna lyric

Just finished this earlier on, and I have to say, I wasn't particularly impressed. I went in with relatively high expectations, considering how much I enjoyed White Teeth, but there was something about this novel that just didn't connect with me.

I'm thinking that this might have been a more intriguing story if Tracey stayed a major character all the way through, instead of focusing so heavily on Aimee, Fern, etc., considering how intriguing her story was, and the real warmth and depth of the story shone through the protagonist's relationship with her.

But, there were some interesting outlooks on the inter-connection of race and class, which could be the book's saving grace, if it were to end up on the shortlist. However, I don't think this is going to make it, but that could just be my own view.

Paul wrote: "I assumed it was an artistic one of saying

"I met Tracey at 10am each Saturday in 1982 - I don't particularly remember specifically the date of the first time I met her, but in any case we got to..."

OK - I'll go with that. Interestingly, I've just read it to my wife. She and I both heard it as a sort of mathematical puzzle where you had to work out what 10am represented if you rolled all 52 Saturdays into one long day.

But on fifth re-read it clearly says every Saturday contained a 10am meeting with Tracey.

I think.

If all the Saturdays of 1982...:

I understood this meaning that meeting Tracey was a gradual process, happening over an entire year each Saturday at 10 am going to church. The observations listed in the subsequent paragraphs contain more material than could reasonably have been gathered at a single meeting.

Yes. My problem was that I laid all the Saturdays end-to-end in my mind, rather than on top of each other. If I had visualised them all overlaid, I might have understood!

Incidentally I do recommend (again) the Eleanor Wachtel interview - made me appreciate the book more (even if I stick by the observation that she is a better essayist - or interviewee - than novelist).

She also posed an interesting question to the reader. Did you know the name of the country in which the African parts were set - and if not, why not?

"I watched it (a dragonfly) land on the deck, just by my hand, and close its iridescent wings."

Call me pedantic, but it if it closed its wings, it probably wasn't a dragonfly. Maybe a damselfly or a demoiselle.

Or even a different P word?

:-)

I daren't guess.

Just finished. Interesting, but, like others here, I wasn't a great fan of the Aimee bits. The Tracey bits were good, though!

I got side-tracked by a word study on "shadow" - an ebook search turns up interesting quotes.

Also I noted similarities to Autumn (with Le Gon replacing Boty, and I wish there had been more about that) a mention of the Underground Railroad and a mention of the Irish involvement in the founding of America (a la Days Without End).

As I think someone has remarked on another forum, Zadie Smith is a writer I have a huge amount of time for and I am always impressed when I hear her interviewed, see her do a reading from her books or read an article by her. However when I look back at my reviews of her novels to date, all of which I have read as soon as they were published, it's only really White Teeth that stands out as one I unambiguously enjoyed.

I'm only about two thirds of the way through Swing Time, but unless it's a remarkable last third it will struggle to make my shortlist.

However, I had one of those literary 'moments' whilst reading. I recently holidayed on the island of Jura, famously the place George Orwell wrote 1984. Whilst there, and given that I foolishly took my holiday just before the longlist was published, I chose to read Coming Up For Air. Published in June 1939 this was Orwell's 'Things Fall Apart', and in some ways a foretaste of ideas he would later unpack in Animal Farm and 1984. It was very good, although the sexism of the time takes a little getting used to.

Anyway, back to Swing Time and to our narrator's father who responds to the impending separation from his wife by reading Coming Up For Air. Whilst I found that to be an unlikely book to stumble across at just that time, it is a perfect fit in terms of further defining his character as looking back on the past and fearing that all must change, and is changing, and has changed.

(I've now finished reading Swing Time and the last third didn't change my over all opinion - it's OK, but not great. I'd be disappointed if it made the shortlist ahead of any of the other 5 I've read so far.)

Paul, I've thought for years that Smith is a much better essayist than she is a novelist, so I'm glad to see someone else say this. I've enjoyed the 4 novels of her's that I've read, but they never felt as engaging or immediate as her non-fiction.

I was just about to post my review when I read the above. I completely agree that Zadie Smith is a far better essayist than novelist. It is a shame that in the US and UK little attention is paid to essays compared to novels. Here is the review...

Least favorite Paul Auster followed by my least favorite Zadie Smith. A trend with this year's Booker? Hopefully not, but I would strongly argue that this is not a very successful book.

First, the characters are poorly drawn, with the possible exceptions of the narrator's mother and childhood friend. We are told details of other characters, actually many other characters, but there is little effort to provide sufficient information about any character for them to do more than serve the purpose of a foil for the narrator in a particular scene. When next we meet that character, the information gleaned from the previous scene is of little use, so we keep meeting two-dimensional people. The narrator goes through life insular and largely alone, but when that person repeatedly comes in contact with less than fully formed individuals, the result is an endless number of boring and shallow situations.

The narrator works for much of the novel as a personal assistant to Aimee, a world famous singer who is self-absorbed and moves from one poorly thought out crusade to another. One such is to create a school for girls in rural Gambia that forms one of the novel's tangents (nothing rises to the complexity of being a plot). The author has no intention of creating a flesh and blood character in Aimee, clearly she is designed as a stereotype. But even in that the details don't add up, and she is merely a ghostly presence who intrudes, demands, stumbles and says inane things. But our feelings towards what happens in the book, and particularly the trajectory of the narrator, would have more impact, and make more sense, if Aimee, or anyone else, was portrayed with more attention to detail.

As always with Zadie Smith the words are carefully and skillfully arrayed, and the book is bursting with ideas about culture, race, class, family. But nothing is very fully realized, and soon I will have forgotten everything about this book.

I am 70 pages in to my re read and hugely enjoying it. The narrator's mother and the young Tracey are great characters and the exploitation of their different home lives is fascinating. However I know when I turn the page that Aimee is coming .....

I am only 1/3 in, and reading your comments above, this is supposed to be the best part of the book - oh no! I usually enjoy novels with transcultural and biracial themes, but I do not see (at least yet) that Smith adds new or different ideas to the somewhat classic neuralgic points that usually come up in those kinds of books. If you read novels like Caucasia or Passing, "Swing Time" is kind of a let-down.

The best book recently published about how it can feel to grow up as a mixed race child is clearly Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood (yes, I know it doesn't qualify for the Booker, but it is absorbing, interesting and fresh, so read it! :-)).

Just to add to my comments above, my thoughts on my second read of the book.

When approaching it for a re-read given its long-listing, I reflected that the first person narrator approach which Smith had adopted for the first time, perhaps should have given her a different opportunity to transfer her essay skills more easily to yet novel form.

Even more so, as the narrator tells us very early on (in a shadow based theme which occurs throughout the book) "a truth was being revealed to me. That I had always tried to attach myself to the light of other people, that I never had any light of my own. I experienced myself as a kind of shadow.

This idea of the narrator as shadow could imply the "annihilated perspective" that Rachel Cusk used so successfully in "Outline", a narrator who acts more as a listener and filter, exploring the life stories of those in which she interacts. In this respect it seems telling that the narrator is not named, and in fact nor is the university she attends (although it's clearly Brighton) or the African country where she spends much of the book (although it's clearly Gambia).

And yet ........... this simply doesn't happen here and the book remains a big disappointment to me. I think that the reasons for this is that (with one group of exceptions in the first 70 or so pages of the narrator and Tracey's childhood) the characters with which she interacts (particularly The Madonna/Angelina/Kylie mash up Aimee but also to pick some examples Lamin, Fern, Granger, Tracey's father Louie, her uncle Lambert, Aimee's manager Judy, Aimee's children's Nanny Estelle, the Noted Activist, even the narrators mother in her politician phase) are so one-dimensional and given so little chance to tell their story, that they end up as simple stereotypes.

From the interview with Eleanor Wachtel:

- she has previously been reluctant to use a first-person narrator because she worries people will then take their views as hers. So I guess unlikely she would use the device to make essayistic points.

- the lack of a name was in part accidental, and seems to be what she regards as a natural first person voice (you don't say your name, or indeed those of your parents)

- and the non-naming of the African country seems designed to make a point. She said she was surprised (and it seemed delighted) how many reviews she had seen / conversations she'd had where people didn't realise the name of the country.

Gumble
You make reference to Rachel Cusk and "annihilated perspective" as an example of first person narrative.
Cusk's adoption of this phrase is hers alone, and I do struggle to make sense if it. It's not a recognised genre, like, say, magical realism.
In point of fact the only other time I've seen "annihilated perspective" referred to, was by a certain Paul Fulcher.
I would almost be tempted to say that the pseudonymous GY and Paul F. might be one and the same, and claim my £5 reward?

We are definitely not the same person - I demand a DNA test to prove it ...... ohhhh!

Google reports 71 incidents of "annihilated perspective" in its search results - and the 4th on the list is actually this forum!

But it comes from an interview in the Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

Paul, You will have to remind me of the writer featured in, and citing the expression, in the Guardian article.

The other references to the phrase (on page 1 Google) don't seem to have any immediate connection to writing styles or techniques, but they do include "Peeling Potatoes" , "Antarctica" and "Architecture"

Surely she should be praised for inventing a whole new genre of books rather than criticised.

Maybe. Could have chosen a better phrase though?

I rather like it - although annihilated makes it sound a more violent process than it is. But I think Cusk thrives on antagonism.

Monica Ali in the NY Times used "shadowy narrator" and also quotes other critics using the phrases “a cipher,” “self-effacing,” “numbly inert,” and “a faint image.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/bo...)

We've rather hijacked the thread - but to be fair when Kudos is eventually published (she has just finished it) it will take the 2018 or 2019 Booker for sure.

Great profile of her in the New Yorker recently:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

Paul. Going back to the interview

With respect to her comment on not saying your own name, my counter is that other people do say your name in conversation, and this is a book with lots of directly reproduced conversation. I just opened the book at random and on the page I opened the narrator three times in a conversation with Fern, uses the word Fern. But no one uses her name in the entire book.

And as to Gambia what was she trying to achieve by not naming Brighton.

Small points but they all add to my (our) view of a great writer who can't seem to bring all of her brilliance to bear in a novel.

All fair points. I am trying but failing to defend a book I ultimately gave 2 stars and have 9th out of 10 (and a long way behind number 8) so far on the list.

I rounded it to 3 as I enjoyed it both times, just found it frustrating that it could have been great. But it's still 10th out of 12 for me.

This one ticks along. Easy to cover 100 pages. A book which might be praised/lambasted as readable? Smith is an acute storyteller, but I resent the cliches - of every type. Maybe the next 350 pages will sway me into Z. Smith's camp. If not, I'll at least remember more about this novel than A. Smith's.

Zadie's got zverve. Another 100+ pages yesterday, which is contrary to my reading style. ST is propulsive, and I'm enjoying that go-go.

Well, I didn't particularly love My Brilliant Friend, which this has been compared too, and the women in this book are even less interesting/compelling. I'm about 4 hours into the audio, and already Aimee is getting on my nerves.

I am two thirds of the way through, and although it is an entertaining read, I agree with the consensus - it is a little bit shallow and it is impossible not to read Aimee as a caricature of Madonna (with Kylie's Australian roots). I loved her essay collection Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays, particularly the literary criticism, and that makes me feel she should be capable of better things.

I liked the book. Who is Madonna?

So far I'm a 100 pages in and I like it. Not her best but not her worst either. I see some bits as extra though - was there really any need to include the ' private part pinching' scene? Sometimes Zadie Smith's writing can be deliberately artsy (cf The Autograph Man) and here it's pretty down to earth. I appreciate that.

Maybe the fact that I can relate to the time period, as I was a teenager during the mid 90's, helps.

Now halfway through ( I had a busy weekend) really the section which deal with childhood are good, enjoyable reads. Unfortunately the sections which focus on the vanity charity trip to Africa are a bit superficial and the book loses its punch. However I'm not bored at this point.

An excellent read. I had lost faith with Zadie Smith but this novel restored everything I like about her.

And here's the obligatory GR review:

There are two types of Zadie Smith books: The ones where she writes concise and clearly (White Teeth, On Beauty) and then there's the sort of dense experimental novels (Autograph Man) Thankfully Swing Time is part of the former category. Also it's her best and most socially conscious novel since White Teeth.

There's a TON of themes within the book. Social class, racial relations, African reasoning vs western world mentality. politics , art , the music business, white people problems, love and that is just skimming the surface. At the core though it's relationships. Namely the relationship between two mixed race girls; Tracey and the unnamed narrator of the novel, who both love dancing. The things is Tracey is good at it while the narrator is a mediocre dancer, which sets her off on a voyage of self discovery.

Swing Time swings (HA!) between the two phases of the narrator's life. There are the early years when she speaks about her friendship/rivalry with Tracey and her later years when she works for a PR assistant to a Madonna/Kylie Minogue sort of popstar called Aimee. This is all in non chronological order, but it works and helps Smith expand on the multitude of themes in a non muddled fashion.

A lot of people on GR have praised the childhood narratives while the Aimee sections tend to be criticised. At first I thought that the themes explored in the Aimee section were a bit too simplistic, especially compared to the sections detailing the narrator's childhood which are strong and fantastic reading but it was pointed out that it's a question of subtlety and I can see that. In hindsight the Aimee parts are the most politically driven sections of Swing Time and I was able to appreciate that. There's one part where Aimee decides to set up a school in Africa where Smith lets her satirical edge go wild but at the same time it's not blatant. Coupled with the gorgeous style ( Zadie please ditch the arty farty style of the post White Teeth novels, it doesn't suit you) this is a satisfying read.

So yes I did enjoy reading Swing Time. I might not have given it five stars due to the fact that it is a teensy bit overlong but for someone who has been disappointed with Zadie Smith's novels in the past this was excellent in restoring my faith in this intelligent writer.

This was my first Zadie. She's talented. The narrator and Tracey sections were razored. I'd read Z again, despite some objections to use of a few tired refrains. As Saunders wrote, "The tide runs out but never runs back in. The stones roll downhill but do not roll back up."

This was my first book by Zadie Smith.

The narrator is quite odd, isn't she, very unlikeable, and I found it hard to relate to her - she never really manages to have a genuine, close relationship to any of the other characters in the novel - and doesn't seem to actually care for any them. (except her mum at the end perhaps)

The only thing she does care about seems to be online reactions to her, Tracy and Aimee and their conflicts.

The other characters all sort of float away with very few ripples on the surface (she sleeps with Lamin, even though she doesn't care for him, and should expect the consequences it has, she severs ties with her dad because of the doll (sure it's odd and not info you want, but cutting off your dad forever??)

So a novel with interesting bits, but quite uneven all in all

It is only when you go back to write the review do you realize how many themes she has managed to raise, and answer, in her own wandering way, in this huge book, packed with attitude.

Unnamed narrator, a brown girl growing up in Brent, gets the dream job working as a general factotum for an international rock star called Aimee who is really Madonna wearing a Kylie mask.

The story dips back and forth in our narrator's life. There was a friendly childhood rivalry with Tracey - who lived fun the flats on the wrong side of the road. There was the job working for a youth TV company. There was the mother's political career as she became MP for Brent West. There were romances. The really constant line, though, is Aimee. This is a good insight into the world of the super-rich; the superstars with retinues, with diaries chock-full of trivia, with a quest for new challenges when everything has already been achieved. So we follow our narrator, following Aimee to The Gambia where the plan is to set up a school for girls. Aimee has the big idea, her retinue have to make it happen. It is a classic case of imposing western values on a developing country; the school is not what the community needs but, by God, it is what they are going to get.

But the Gambian line starts to get bogged down with personal relationships. As the Aimee party all seem to hook up with Gambians, it gets mighty dull. Do I care that A fancies B and B fancies C? I think not.

And the Tracey line is also interesting, although it is not quite clear how friendly rivalry in teenage became hostility in adulthood. Tracey is a dancer and pursues her dream. Our narrator doesn't really have a dream but pursues it anyway. There was supposed to be a significant moment, but when it is revealed it carries too much weight.

There is enough in the book to make the reader smile. There is pop culture, satire, race, class, politics. But there is also this saggy, baggy middle that goes on way too long and allows the interest to wane. I didn't buy the ending at all - which required our narrator to become a disgruntled employee and for her employer to discover that fact. Both these premises were implausible. But at least it brought a long novel to a somewhat belated end.

This sounds negative, but on balance the good did outweigh the bad. But if only there had been a stronger editor...