Her goal, bluntly stated in the novel’s early pages, is to remain in blissful newlywed stasis for eternity. Unlike her husband, Leah lacks both lofty ambitions and the desire for children. The first and most experimental section focuses on Leah Hanwell, a white half-Irish Londoner who is married, in typical Zadie Smith fashion, to a black French immigrant whose name (Michel) and lofty ambitions are subject, or so it seems to Leah, to constant butchering by everyone else. NW purports to follow the lives of four Northwest Londoners, but the stories of childhood best friends Leah and Keisha (who changes her name to Natalie), both of whom grew up in a projects-style council estate, receive the bulk of the novel’s space, depth, and energy. She wants it to reinvent her readership’s image of her even as it re-establishes her literary roots, and to revive the energy of her chosen form - the novel - even as it tries to revise the novel’s parameters. Zadie Smith expects a lot from NW, her fourth novel.
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