![]() ![]() Her characters, often biracial, frequently grow up in council estates - the English equivalent of inner-city, low-income housing projects - in the ethnically mixed, ungentrified northwest quadrant of London. To her surprise, the speaker shows a clip from “Swing Time,” one of her favorite movies as a child, to illustrate his theory of “pure cinema” - which he defines as an “interplay of light and dark, expressed as a kind of rhythm, over time.” Smith’s narrator professes boredom, but don’t be fooled: Right up front, the author has given readers a sneak preview of what she’s up to in this agile, propulsive coming-of-age novel: an “interplay of light and dark, expressed as a kind of rhythm, over time.”īeginning with “White Teeth” in 2000, Smith has grappled with big, sensitive issues of race, class, ambition, success and failure. In the opening pages of “Swing Time,” Zadie Smith’s vibrant fifth novel, her narrator, recently dismissed for disloyalty and publicly humiliated after working 10 years around the clock as personal assistant to a demanding superstar, wanders into a film lecture at London’s Royal Festival Hall. ![]()
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