Swing Time: LONGLISTED for the Man Booker Prize 2017

hardcover

Published Aug. 25, 2016 by Penguin Press.

ISBN:: 978-0-241-14415-2

(1 review)

"An ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from North West London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty Two brown girls dream of being dancers--but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early twenties, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either. Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend leaves the old neighborhood behind, traveling the world as an assistant to a famous singer, Aimee, observing close up how the one percent live. But when Aimee develops grand philanthropic ambitions, the story moves from London to West Africa, where diaspora tourists travel back in time to find their roots, young men risk …

"An ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from North West London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty Two brown girls dream of being dancers--but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early twenties, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either. Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend leaves the old neighborhood behind, traveling the world as an assistant to a famous singer, Aimee, observing close up how the one percent live. But when Aimee develops grand philanthropic ambitions, the story moves from London to West Africa, where diaspora tourists travel back in time to find their roots, young men risk their lives to escape into a different future, the women dance just like Tracey--the same twists, the same shakes--and the origins of a profound inequality are not a matter of distant history, but a present dance to the music of time"--

6 editions

harun el rashid reviewed Swing Time: LONGLISTED for the Man Booker Prize 2017 by Zadie Smith

Review of 'Swing Time: LONGLISTED for the Man Booker Prize 2017' on 'GoodReads'

2 stars

This was my first ever Zadie Smith book and I expected to be wowed a lot more than I was.

I think in part it's just difficult to like, sympathize with, or care about the main character. She's just ... there. And I think that's really the problem. She's not actually fleshed out enough initially that she has any sort of character arc, so a coming-of-age story about her just kind of falls flat. I would happily have read a book about her mother, her father, Tracey, the bodyguard (I forget his name), or like ... basically any other character, because everyone else has an excitement and a life of their own in a way that the protagonist doesn't.

Because the main character is clearly just a background for social commentary, the social commentary to me really falls flat. Like. I study critical race theory, I really like that sort …

This was my first ever Zadie Smith book and I expected to be wowed a lot more than I was.

I think in part it's just difficult to like, sympathize with, or care about the main character. She's just ... there. And I think that's really the problem. She's not actually fleshed out enough initially that she has any sort of character arc, so a coming-of-age story about her just kind of falls flat. I would happily have read a book about her mother, her father, Tracey, the bodyguard (I forget his name), or like ... basically any other character, because everyone else has an excitement and a life of their own in a way that the protagonist doesn't.

Because the main character is clearly just a background for social commentary, the social commentary to me really falls flat. Like. I study critical race theory, I really like that sort of thing, but it just felt forced here. It felt in places like the author had constructed the narrative to air out as many grievances as possible without any sort of coherence. First it's about the hardship of being mixed race growing up in London, then there's some half-baked critique of the global humanitarian regime, and then there's a totally underdeveloped reference to cultural appropriation that the author just sort of expects us to "get." And with a totally un-engaging protagonist you just really can't be bothered to care.

Also, the ending? It just doesn't make sense. Why does she make him come to England just to like ... abandon him? Why not just leave him in Senegal?