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John Mullan on NW – Guardian book club John Mullan on NW – Guardian book club
(2 months later)
Zadie Smith's NW begins with an encounter that will be entirely familiar to her London readers. A young woman appears at Leah's front door in evident distress. She is crying, traumatised, collapsing. Her mother has had a heart attack and been taken away in an ambulance. She urgently needs to get to the hospital. She must have money for a taxi. Like an applicant for a parking permit or membership of a leisure centre, she waves a utility bill. "– PLEASE – oh my God help me – please Miss, I live here – I live just here, please God – check, please –" How much does she need? "Twenty? Thirty ... is safe." Leah gives it to her. "Pay you back. Swear to God, yeah? Thanks, seriously. You saved me today."Zadie Smith's NW begins with an encounter that will be entirely familiar to her London readers. A young woman appears at Leah's front door in evident distress. She is crying, traumatised, collapsing. Her mother has had a heart attack and been taken away in an ambulance. She urgently needs to get to the hospital. She must have money for a taxi. Like an applicant for a parking permit or membership of a leisure centre, she waves a utility bill. "– PLEASE – oh my God help me – please Miss, I live here – I live just here, please God – check, please –" How much does she need? "Twenty? Thirty ... is safe." Leah gives it to her. "Pay you back. Swear to God, yeah? Thanks, seriously. You saved me today."
It is, of course, a scam. Both Leah's mother and her French husband are indignant. "– How d'you get so soft?" Having lived in the same corner of the city for all her 35 years, how could Leah fall for this regular urban trick? She has been deceived by the illusion of belonging. It is not just the address on that bill. The woman is "familiar". "Leah has seen this face many times in these streets." The plot of Zadie Smith's novel will turn on this odd experience: seeing faces you recognise from the street. The main characters keep bumping into each other, but these encounters are not exactly coincidences. The empirical reality of this urban novel is that you keep seeing the same people. There will be a murder in the book and we will discover that we know the victim and the perpetrator. It is a matter not of plot but of urban geography.It is, of course, a scam. Both Leah's mother and her French husband are indignant. "– How d'you get so soft?" Having lived in the same corner of the city for all her 35 years, how could Leah fall for this regular urban trick? She has been deceived by the illusion of belonging. It is not just the address on that bill. The woman is "familiar". "Leah has seen this face many times in these streets." The plot of Zadie Smith's novel will turn on this odd experience: seeing faces you recognise from the street. The main characters keep bumping into each other, but these encounters are not exactly coincidences. The empirical reality of this urban novel is that you keep seeing the same people. There will be a murder in the book and we will discover that we know the victim and the perpetrator. It is a matter not of plot but of urban geography.
Location is needed to tether a narrative whose formal restiveness would otherwise produce incoherence. The novel's five sections are strictly differentiated by tense, point of view and style. The first section, "Visitation", is third person from Leah's point of view (though with a surprising digression into her husband's thoughts) and in a stream of consciousness. Several of its chapters following Leah's thoughts and observations also follow routes, as if a mental A-Z map were needed to capture the flux of experience. One comprises the directions given by a routefinder website for Leah's journey from an address in London NW8 to another in NW6. The next chapter duly follows the computer's directions through Leah's uncensored consciousness: "Leaflets, call abroad 4 less, learn English, eyebrow wax, Falun Gong, have you accepted Jesus as your personal call plan? Everybody loves fried chicken. Everybody. Bank of Iraq, Bank of Egypt, Bank of Libya." Another narrates her impressions as she travels on the No 98 bus (Willesden to Holborn via Kilburn High Road). The important facts of her story – that she goes to a clinic to arrange an abortion – are subordinated to her sense of place.Location is needed to tether a narrative whose formal restiveness would otherwise produce incoherence. The novel's five sections are strictly differentiated by tense, point of view and style. The first section, "Visitation", is third person from Leah's point of view (though with a surprising digression into her husband's thoughts) and in a stream of consciousness. Several of its chapters following Leah's thoughts and observations also follow routes, as if a mental A-Z map were needed to capture the flux of experience. One comprises the directions given by a routefinder website for Leah's journey from an address in London NW8 to another in NW6. The next chapter duly follows the computer's directions through Leah's uncensored consciousness: "Leaflets, call abroad 4 less, learn English, eyebrow wax, Falun Gong, have you accepted Jesus as your personal call plan? Everybody loves fried chicken. Everybody. Bank of Iraq, Bank of Egypt, Bank of Libya." Another narrates her impressions as she travels on the No 98 bus (Willesden to Holborn via Kilburn High Road). The important facts of her story – that she goes to a clinic to arrange an abortion – are subordinated to her sense of place.
The second section ("Guest") is narrated in the past tense and the third person from the point of view of a wastrel called Felix (though again there is a digression, this time into the mind of a posh, unworldly boy called Tom, from whom he is buying a car). Again, the A-Z anchors the episodes, the chapters being labelled NW6 (Kilburn, from where he travels) and W1 (a mews off Oxford Street, where Tom keeps the MG his father gave him). This time the style is more conventional, a kind of modern social comedy. On his way back to his new girlfriend in NW territory, Felix stops to consort with an old girlfriend on a Soho rooftop, and her harshly witty drawl sounds like the patois of a different region.The second section ("Guest") is narrated in the past tense and the third person from the point of view of a wastrel called Felix (though again there is a digression, this time into the mind of a posh, unworldly boy called Tom, from whom he is buying a car). Again, the A-Z anchors the episodes, the chapters being labelled NW6 (Kilburn, from where he travels) and W1 (a mews off Oxford Street, where Tom keeps the MG his father gave him). This time the style is more conventional, a kind of modern social comedy. On his way back to his new girlfriend in NW territory, Felix stops to consort with an old girlfriend on a Soho rooftop, and her harshly witty drawl sounds like the patois of a different region.
The third and longest section ("Host") comprises 185 separately numbered and titled fragments. It is narrated from the point of view of Leah's old friend Natalie, though with intrusive authorial comments ("described above", "as the Jamaicans say"). We get the story of her life, which is itself locational: she was once called Keisha, and went to the same school as Leah; she has moved up in the world, becoming a lawyer, marrying a kind man with money and moving to one of the area's grand Victorian houses, with a beautiful kitchen for her beautiful children. But she has an addiction. She secretively trawls internet sites for something. The mystery of her search slowly reveals itself in her journeys to different parts of London – to meet a seedy couple on the Finchley Road, or two young Asian men in Wembley. It is as if telling you where something happens is more important than telling you what happens.The third and longest section ("Host") comprises 185 separately numbered and titled fragments. It is narrated from the point of view of Leah's old friend Natalie, though with intrusive authorial comments ("described above", "as the Jamaicans say"). We get the story of her life, which is itself locational: she was once called Keisha, and went to the same school as Leah; she has moved up in the world, becoming a lawyer, marrying a kind man with money and moving to one of the area's grand Victorian houses, with a beautiful kitchen for her beautiful children. But she has an addiction. She secretively trawls internet sites for something. The mystery of her search slowly reveals itself in her journeys to different parts of London – to meet a seedy couple on the Finchley Road, or two young Asian men in Wembley. It is as if telling you where something happens is more important than telling you what happens.
The last two short sections (Crossing" and, again, "Visitation") will bring the characters together in the present. "Crossing", in which Natalie apparently walks out on her husband, follows a night journey across north London, name-checking roads from Willesden Lane to Hornsey Lane. Then in the final section, we are back where we started, via another bus journey, and the grubby mystery of the murder is solved. As the reader should by now expect, the solution involves one of the characters recalling whom she has seen in which street. Location, as ever, is reality.The last two short sections (Crossing" and, again, "Visitation") will bring the characters together in the present. "Crossing", in which Natalie apparently walks out on her husband, follows a night journey across north London, name-checking roads from Willesden Lane to Hornsey Lane. Then in the final section, we are back where we started, via another bus journey, and the grubby mystery of the murder is solved. As the reader should by now expect, the solution involves one of the characters recalling whom she has seen in which street. Location, as ever, is reality.
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