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Zadie Smith captures the essence of the multi-racial metropolis within these pages. By using a variety of narrative techniques, she demonstrates the randomness of city life and the overlapping nature of everyday experience, and she also shows how varied the voices are within the said city. It’s a contortion of meaning, life and stories.

When I began reading this all I could thing about was James Joyce. The first section of the book has borrowed many elements from Ulysses and like Dubliners an entire city has been novelised. I wasn’t too sure what to make of this. There’s nothing wrong with reusing elements of storytelling from other writers, pastiche is fine, but this felt too gimmicky: it felt too similar to Joyce. Though as the book progressed, Smith shed these shackles and began to experiment with different writing styles: her voice came through.

I think she used Joyce’s style purposely to demonstrate how much of this contemporary piece is in the vein of the modernist discourse; she, like Joyce, is attempting to recreate the essence of real life on the page. And real life isn’t organised or structured. The novel as an artifice is limiting at evoking this; thus, writers like Zadie Smith play around with language and technique. They attempt to capture something that by its very nature cannot be categorised. She does it wonderfully, weaving a novel together out of seemingly interrelated episodes that only come together, ever so briefly, at the end.

Some sections were more readable than others. The first section uses the dashes of Ulysses to indicate speech and uses several brief encounters to tell the story. The second section follows a straight narrative with normal speech marks. The third is told in a huge list of points, each a paragraph or two long following various sections of Natalie’s life. And the fourth and final section felt like normal story telling. I’ve been reading a fair few professional reviews for this (those for actual publications) and many of the reviewers seem to have overlooked and/or misunderstood parts of this novel. One even suggested that the second section was the only one that was readable/ enjoyable. But this isn’t a story that follows an organised route because life, especially city life, doesn’t do that.

“Not everyone wants this conventional little life you’re rowing your boat toward. I like my river of fire. And when it’s time for me to go I fully intend to roll off my one-person dinghy into the flames and be consumed. I'm not afraid.�

When I think about NW I think about a novel (can I call it a novel?) that defies expectations and conventions. It is a piece of writing that brings together themes of monotony and ordinariness. With its use of colloquialisms and slang dialogue, NW collects a whole host of voices that share their experiences with sex, coming of age, the using of drugs, trying to get pregnant and existence amongst the suburbs. From the professionals to the average workers, Smith captures the heart of the modern city.

That being said though, it is a difficult novel to pick up and an even harder one to put down. When I was reading I was enthralled by the language and essence of the book, but when I went to pick the book up a later date I struggled to do so. I’d lost the thread of the plot because there wasn’t really a solid one. And I think this would put off many readers, for me NW is one to read quite quickly and in as few sittings as possible.