Swing Time by Zadie Smith

I generally really love Zadie Smith's books. They're delightful, interesting, they make me think and sometimes make me laugh. She's got such an eye for aspects of London, and how Englishness and race collide or intersect, and how the two might be negotiated. That said, though, I don't feel like I loved Swing Time quite as much as I have some of her others. It's not bad - I had fun reading it. But it's already starting to fade in my memory, which is not a great sign.  While I was reading it, I was sure I'd have lots to talk about in this review, and I've already forgotten what all those things were, which is a pity.

I don't know what I'm having trouble connecting with. I felt much more engaged in the early parts of the novel, when we were with the two leads, Tracey and the unnamed narrator, growing up in a relatively poor part of London. Both girls have one Black parent and one white one, but their living situations are starkly different - the narrator's mother is bent on learning all the theory she can, aiming at eventually going into politics (and doing so.) She is driven, and pushes her daughter hard, not necessarily seeing the spots where theory doesn't meet practice all that well. But still, it's a loving family situation, rounded out by the narrator's father, who is caring and unambitious.

Tracey's mother is more detached, more permissive, and Tracey's father is only rarely part of her life. Tracey tries to say that that's because he's one of Michael Jackson's backup dancers and on tour, but the truth is that he's often in jail. The two girls bond over a dance class, where Tracey shines, and the narrator does not. The narrator has a good singing voice, but there's no encouragement for her to pursue it.

Perhaps it's where the book veers into the narrator's adult life as an assistant to a pop star that failed to hold me. The world of pop music is not one I feel particularly close to, and this version of Madonna/Kylie Minogue/whatever is fine, but I didn't feel like it wormed its way inside me. In a lot of ways, this section feels very much like how the narrator describes this decade-long interlude in her life - detached from the rest of the world. But while the narrator is wrapped up in Aimee and Aimee's sense of self, I didn't connect with it, so when she returns from that land of the very rich and very famous, it didn't stick with me.

At any rate, much of book centers around the narrator's work as Aimee's first personal assistant, including a bunch of trips to West Africa to set up a girls' school. Aimee is heavily invested in this project, but impatient to cut through both red tape and the advice from those with experience in non-governmental organizations in the region. The narrator ends up spending quite a bit of time there in advance of each of Aimee's trips, meeting the villagers as well as the advisor to the project, a man who is frustrated by Aimee's intent to pretend that what is complex is actually simple.

Meanwhile, Tracey's life initially resulted in a few roles in musicals in the chorus, dancing, but later changes into motherhood and sending increasingly angry and unhinged emails to the narrator's mother, who is now an M.P., dating a woman, and also trying to bring her concerns to Aimee about the school, through her daughter. Everything for the narrator falls apart, as we're told in the first couple of pages it will, and she is back in London, back in a world that she's been out of for a decade, with her mother in hospice, and no friends.

It really does feel like there are a lot of good elements here, but somehow, still, I don't like it quite as well as Smith's other books. It's still immensely readable, but it's not sticking to me. I wish I hadn't forgotten those things I wanted to write about, but so it goes.