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As many other reviewers have commented, I wanted to like this book more than I did. It approached greatness in many ways---the clever and often hilarious dialogue, the quirky characters, the creative family histories, the rich and convincing place descriptions, and so on. Despite the strengths of each of these parts, as a whole the book fell far short of greatness. It took me until the final pages to figure out what was missing for me: I did not genuinely care about most of the characters. I did not feel sympathy for them, or root for them, or have my own ideas of how I hoped things would turn out.

This is likely due to the many, many story lines at play in the novel (story lines that span a hundred years in some cases). But it still felt unacceptable to me that the book begins with one of the most intimate moments a person can experience (though it is treated with humor) and closes with an equally major event in the life of that same character, yet we hardly KNOW this character. He is a central presence on page one and the final page, but he is lost in between. While I laughed at Joyce Chalfen, Alsana, Abdul-Mickey, Magid, Hortense, and a dozen more amusing and creative characters, I felt no emotional connection to them at all. The biggest disappointment perhaps was the disappearance of Clara's voice from the pages. They remained, though entertaining, very flat to me. The only character I sincerely rooted for and felt drawn to was Irie Jones. Her story alone, though it does not emerge until the second half of the book, made the novel worth reading to me.

I was intrigued enough by Zadie Smith's writing to give her other works a try, but I closed the book last night with a definite sense of a letdown.