Swing Time by Zadie Smith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Zadie Smith is, as ever, magnificent. Her work embodies what I think is one of the most important jobs of the novel, which is to allow the reader to dwell for a time in a world very different from the one they’re used to.
Swing Time also does this very cool novelistic thing where a relationship (I’m thinking of the narrator and Tracey) acquires so much history and complexity that by the end of the book, even very simple interactions between the two people take on a great depth of meaning. It just can’t happen without a fairly long story coming first, which is why it’s a feature of the novel and not the short story. (I also think something like this is possible in Netflix-binge-able television series, but not in movies.)
And this is why the novel as a form is great: because in real life, many simple interactions do in fact conceal a lot of complexity and significance; but there’s no way to explain or communicate it. A novel (particularly of the Dickens-Forster-Smith lineage) can. It’s one of those ways art can let you see life more clearly.
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