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sometimes, it feels like your entire emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being relies on liking one single book.

welcome to that experience for me.

i love the idea of zadie smith, but historically i have not liked her books. my first experience with her wasn't what anyone would recommend. i picked up grand union, her largely disliked short story collection, which i read for the great reason of finding it for $1 at a used bookstore. it turns out there was a reason for that great deal.

my second attempt did not begin auspiciously: i committed an unforgivable reader crime, which is when you go on vacation and bring exclusively books you've been putting off reading in an attempt to finally get through them. i call this "reverse desert island books." i did manage to get through white teeth via this brute force, but i didn't enjoy it.

zadie smith writes entire books with a raised eyebrow, something i appreciated much more this time, when she seems to have a fondness for her unlikable messy characters, than in white teeth, when she seems to be acting as a punishing god whose dislike for the people of her novel is rivaled only by the exhausted reader's.

this did feel fairly plodding and abrupt, and i didn't out and out love it at any point, but i did truly feel impressed at times. and that, to me, is enough for a good time.

bottom line: i get the appeal! thank god.