“Grand Union” by Zadie Smith

NIGHTSTANDS & COFFEE TABLES

REVIEW BY MEREDITH MCKINNIE

“We’re submerged, all of us. You, me, the children, our friends, their children, everybody else…The plain fact is that we will be carried along by the Lazy River, at the same rate, under the same relentless Spanish sun, for ever, until we are not.”

This book of short stories is from one of the newer voices in literature, one the critics praise and the professors teach. I found the writer Zadie Smith as interesting as her writing. While reading through this book, I found myself searching for interviews with her on YouTube, curious what she was saying about her writing in hindsight. Her stories are laced with meaning and truths about life, often hard ones or those often ignored. She doesn’t shy away from hard topics, nor does she rely on them for shock value. Zadie Smith writes eloquently about life. I found myself reading several of the stories over again, particularly the third one in the novel titled “The Lazy River.” At the same time, some of the stories I could hardly relate to at all, and sometimes didn’t even really understand.

This book of stories is like that movie that people you admire really love, but you can’t quite get into even though you know it’s done well. I felt like I needed to know more about life or have lived someone else’s to fully grasp what she is trying to convey in some of her stories. Or perhaps I’m overthinking it all. This book took me some time to read, as once one story ended, I didn’t feel compelled to immediately start the next because there was so much to unpack. Sometimes that unpacking was pleasurable, and sometimes it felt like a burden. Other than “The Lazy River,” I did enjoy “For The King,” about two old friends who meet up and spend an evening walking and talking, catching up on each other’s lives and experiencing the city. She writes, “I had informed my friend that I was exhausted with talking, that I had talked myself to death, and he should do all the talking, on all subjects, no matter how small. I wanted to hear everything, even the dullest minutiae of his life.” We’ve all felt like this, wanting to get lost in the life of someone else we know and trust, as our own life has been too exhausting to explain.

Smith’s words are the ones writers wish they’d written. Each line is sopping with detail and emotional exploitation that several people could read the same story and probably take away entirely different messages, as if she intended the story to be so complex. Smith is British, as many of her stories are set in Europe, with intricately woven details that may be new to an American unfamiliar with the culture. I found these little surprises exciting, like maybe I’d be more equipped to blend in having been exposed to them. For those readers who love literature, particularly the modern writer’s take on life in a modern world, this book is probably your speed.