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Maybe I'm missing something here, but quotes like 'social comedy' and 'intensely funny' that appeared on the back cover of the book I thought were off the mark. Only three or four times can I think of scenes - which reminded me a little of Martin Amis' London Fields - that were genuinely funny. For me, this is much of a social drama than is it a comedy. After all, someone does get knifed to death near a bus stop. Nothing funny in that. Unless it's played out in a satirical or gallows humour kind of way; which it wasn't. Or maybe on the whole it is a funny novel, but I just chose not to see it. Anyway, there was so much I loved about NW, my first of what will certainly be other Zadie Smith novels.

A dazzling multicultural observation of north London told with a coalescence of stylistic postmodern methods, and gritty realism that had me thinking for a minute that I was reading the novel in an impoverished inner city area with a drug dealing neighbour on one side, and a Somalian family of five on the other. There was a great variety of wholly believable characters that wrestled with my emotions throughout - even the minor ones. Clearly this a writer who knows the ins and outs of London life better than the back of her own hands. It's been a while since I felt a city's residents come alive as much as they did here, and all the while I got the sense that Smith was writing NW with political impulses running through her mind.

Smith focuses strongly on the characters of Felix, Leah, and Keisha (name changed to Natalie), and to a lesser extent, Nathan, who all had the hardship of growing up in a grim housing projects area made up of five tower blocks. The narratives shift back and forth between each of them, and also intertwine and go back in time, of which the friendship between Leah and Natalie - going through the years as girls, young women, uni, and work, was one of the most touching and intensely observed parts of the novel. Smith isn't afraid to cut corners too, so we get everything from smoking first cigarettes as tweens, to sex toys and female masturbation in mid-teens. Natalie goes on to become a lawyer and mother, whilst the naive, down on her luck Leah; of Irish descent, who has different cultures clashing around her - a half Algerian, half Guadeloupean husband, the Caribbean Natalie, as well as crossing paths with rich Italians and Trinidadians - finds it hard to understand a binary view of the British class system. Time seems to be Leah's biggest conundrum, as while those around her move forward, she is stuck grasping and pulling back the hands of the clock. When it's raised about starting a family by her husband she is not keen and just wants to stay caught in the net of youth. Felix, a recovering addict trying to get his life back on track, who we follow through just a single day - visiting his disreputable father, going to see about refurbishing an old car, a trip to a pub, and then to drop in on an old flame - was for me the most likeable of the characters and the one who I felt for the most. Smith writes of him in a way that makes it impossible not to get behind Him. There was something so sincere and nice about the way he carried himself, without actually doing anything special or out of the ordinary. Of course, fate has a way of throwing up occurrences where you only have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, regardless of nice, and your whole world can be taken away in an instant.

Keisha, who comes from a churchgoing family and who, because of becoming a barrister, changes her name to Natalie, is Leah’s best friend, although, this friendship has always been challenged and discouraged. She studies law, has drab sex with a boyfriend, before meeting that special someone who would become her husband. But, after working her way up the ladder, her legal profession becomes too much of a strain, and this is echoed by her fragmented narrative. Working with those who are unwelcoming, and struggling with the children she thought would bring happiness, her life is becoming less full-bodied and more hollowed out. Her marriage is falling apart when she starts meeting people online, and winds up drifting the streets with an old classmate, Nathan, It's around this point that all the major character's stories fall into one.

I can only really think of one moment when Smith shocked and surprised me, but, despite this, it's still a racial melting pot of a novel that plays an anxious game, where you never know how things are going to pan together or what is around the corner. It might have started to fall away a bit towards the end, but that's not going to stop me going with 4.5 stars rounded up to 5. I'm torn between reading White Teeth and the essay collection Intimations next. Whichever, I very much look forward to it.

Could Smith possibly be a future contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature I wonder?
I mean, Jesus, if Elfriede Jelinek can win the darn thing!