Zadie smith: Book Review: Swing time

Author: Zadie Smith

Pages: 464

Price: INR 599

Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction

Swing Time is Zadie Smith’s fifth novel and for my money her finest. A “best friend bildungsroman” in the Elena Ferrante mould, the novel tells the story of two girls growing up on the wrong side of town. Residents of neighboring housing estates in London, the pair meet at a community dance class, one (the unnamed narrator) clever and self-doubting, the other (Tracey) confident and self-destructive. As with the Italian bestseller, the talented friend is the tortured one – prematurely sexual, rebellious at school, ungoverned at home – while the less gifted is an able student, determined to make it out of the neighborhood. It gives little away to say that she does, becoming an assistant to a pop star called Aimee. It is by Aimee’s side that she travels the world, jetting from winters to summers.

For its plot alone, Swing Time makes for truly marvelous reading. The narrator’s journey, from the gritty estate to glittering globe and back again, is the juicy stuff of which film adaptations are made. And the music! If one were to make a playlist of the references, one would have the greatest hits of black music: from Gambian drummers to Cab Calloway to Michael Jackson to Rakim. What makes Swing Timeso extraordinary are the layers on which it operates; beneath its virtuosic plotting lies the keenest social commentary.

Dazzlingly energetic and deeply human, Swing Time is a story about friendship and music and stubborn roots, about how we are shaped by these things and how we can survive them. Moving from northwest London to West Africa, it is an exuberant dance to the music of the time.