Book #32: Grand Union by Zadie Smith
Grand Union by Zadie Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I picked this up in a shop last month, as I enjoy reading Zadie Smith's works. It's billed as a collection of short stories, although some felt more like essays, and had an experimental feel similar to some parts of "NW" (I'm still not sure what to make of "Parents' Morning Epiphany").
I did struggle at times with this one; based on my experience of the similar "Feel Free", I think I find that Zadie Smith's short stories are more densely-written than her books, and I found myself having to pay a lot of attention because of the writing style. For example, a very elaborate sentence in one story to explain that a character had been killed, and the fact that the context of some of the stories was not exactly set out (one or two had no dialogue at all). I was trying to work out if a couple of them were meant to be post-apocalyptic fantasies. Some of them seemed like they may have been autobiographical, about the author's own experiences.
Overall, I might have given this a 3.5, but her writing style is undeniably very good, hence the 4/5 rating. It felt like a collection of stories about relationships, family and communities, and why all are important. Many of the stories seemed to portray characters thrown into a situation, and wanting to spend time with each other.
Overall, I enjoyed the experience of reading the individual stories, and my only real problem was that I couldn't tell you what some of them were about.
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