Purchase a copy for yourself here!
Zadie Smith is a towering figure in world literature, widely regarded as one of the most individual voices and incisive observers in our society. She burst onto the scene in 2000 with her debut novel, White Teeth, and since then has been publishing across the fiction and nonfiction genres, inhabiting a variety of perspectives. Grand Union is her first collection of fiction stories, of which there are nineteen, including some stories that had been previously published by outlets such as The New Yorker and The Guardian. The stories and their structures are quite varied, some follow narrative conventions, while others read more as structureless meditations. The narrators and their subjects are not limited to a single time period, race, gender, or age, and while some feel quite close to Smith demographically, other’s couldn’t be farther away. It is thus hard to argue that the collection is rendered cohesive by Smith’s voice, because her voice itself is so hard to categorize. One might have more success arguing that the collection exhibits a cohesive personality, as the variant voices within the collection seem connected by a single animus, which is Smith’s sharp sensibility for language and rhythm.
The collection overall feels quite fresh and relevant, but it seems there are a couple stories included that feel as though they could not stand on their own two legs, but are bolstered by their inclusion in the collection. These stories include some of the more narratively conventional efforts that have trouble getting off the ground, including “Just Wright” and “Miss Adele Among the Corsets”, both of which were a bit indecipherable to me. Most of the stories begin in the middle of a scene, and thus there is often little background provided, and while the casual setup propped up the overall mood of the collection, it muddies the waters in some of the less successful stories. In the stronger stories, the casual openings allow Smith to develop her plots more naturally and without obvious intervention. This naturalistic progression seems most obvious to me in stories like “Escape From New York”, “Big Week”, and “Kelso Deconstructed”, which were three of my favorites in the collection. “Escape From New York” is a fictional retelling of Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Marlon Brando’s escape from New York on 9/11. The characters’ last names are never mentioned, and neither is the specific event, so if a reader were to miss some context clues, the story is a sort of pre-apocalypse adventure involving three strange friends. This story particularly stands out in that it seems to most strongly develop the collection’s overarching interest in misunderstanding. Most of the narrators in these stories feel that they are misunderstood, or they misjudge surrounding characters, and there is an overall quality of alienation and the breakdown of social structure. The three characters in this story are some of the most publicly misunderstood figures in pop culture, individuals who are united in their struggle against the binds of celebrity, whose every personal trauma was broadcasted and dissected globally. Their escape from the city begins to obviously represent their escape from the public eye, and the story is given weight by the clear notes of tragedy in the character backstories: Michael’s references to childhood trauma, Elizabeth’s attachment to material possessions and the men that gifted them to her, and Marlon’s struggle with weight gain. The story is a fascinating deconstruction of oft-discussed public figures, who feel fresh in Smith’s hands.
The same can be said of the story, “Kelso Deconstructed”, in which Smith retells the events leading up to the murder of Antiguan immigrant Kelso Cochrane, whose stabbing by a group of white youths in 50’s West London ignited racial tensions across the city. The story begins with the day of Kelso’s death, but it centers less on the death than the realities of Kelso’s life. The story is mostly dictated around the blinding pain of a workplace injury that has rendered one of Kelso’s thumbs unusable, and just how much strain an injury like that can put on an immigrant laborer. The story also offers a nuanced portrait of Kelso’s relationship with his betrothed, Olivia, focusing on the details of their coexistence. The story is a deeply private narrative about a very public figure. But the important distinction being that Cochrane was only famous in death, and extremely ordinary in life. Smith writes, “He had no last thoughts. Last thoughts are for bourgeois Russian deathbeds, in comfortable town houses, where false friends and colleagues take tea in the next room and ponder what vacancies and opportunities your death might afford them. When you are stabbed in the street that kind of poetry is in short supply.” She concludes the story with a meditation on “transforming a dead man into words”, or society’s tendency to repurpose human lives into sound bytes that can be used to prove a philosophical argument or support a political cause. The story is a really powerful act of recognition, taking the time and energy to live with a man who is most notable for his death.
While “Big Week” is a fictional story, it strikes many of the same human chords as the two previously mentioned. The story centers upon the rehabilitation of a former police officer, Mike McRae, who destroying his family and his career with a heroin addiction. He is a hopeless but lonely figure, who seems throughout the story to spend a large chunk of his time convincing those around him that he is alright. He drives a taxi, discusses training to become a substance abuse counselor, and tries to join the board of the local library. He is broken but earnest, the love he expresses for his ex wife and his grown children is tinged with such a tragic sense of loss and missed opportunity, and one can’t help but root for his success. However, the story shifts focus in its final pages to McRae’s ex-wife, Marie, who we find is also beginning to rebuild her life in a way. She remarks that “time had began to cautiously reshape itself round her broken body, and she found she wanted to be alone with it once more.” Her husbands disgrace has actually given Marie the opportunity to be alone with herself and explore her individuality in a way that she wasn’t previously privileged to. Mike’s extreme sentimentalism for his old life and his wife’s emotional distance from it is a very revealing perspective mismatch, and a deeply nuanced portrayal of misunderstanding in family life.
There are also a number of strong stories in the collection that refuse narrative logic, the most affecting of which are “The Lazy River” and “Parents’ Morning Epiphany”. The first of which is a metaphorical construction of contemporary thought progress and mainstream dialogue as a lazy river that discourages dissidents and encourages effortless participation. The second of which is a satire of a narrative techniques worksheet for the parents of schoolchildren, which is not only quite humorous, but also offers some interesting insight into Smith’s ideas about writing. These stories offer up Smith at her best, as a philosopher with a talent for language. While this collection is definitely not Smith’s strongest work, it is a logical continuation of many of the rhetorical modes that she has explored throughout her career. Her characters always feel complicated and at times irredeemable, and the circumstances she places them often provoke tragedy and alienation. Her voice remains gritty but fresh, and the singularity of her thought exercises remains an achievement for readers to marvel at. The collection hints at future moments of unfiltered genius still awaited in her already prolific career.