Swing Time: LONGLISTED for the Man Booker Prize 2017

hardcover

Published Aug. 25, 2016 by Penguin Press.

ISBN:
978-0-241-14415-2
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4 stars (22 reviews)

"An ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from North West London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty Two brown girls dream of being dancers--but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early twenties, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either. Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend leaves the old neighborhood behind, traveling the world as an assistant to a famous singer, Aimee, observing close up how the one percent live. But when Aimee develops grand philanthropic ambitions, the story moves from London to West Africa, where diaspora tourists travel back in time to find their roots, young men risk …

6 editions

Review of 'Swing Time: LONGLISTED for the Man Booker Prize 2017' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Technically a DNF, but I got to 63%. I kept going so long in this one because this is one of those stories where there are two timelines. I really liked one, and I did not like the other. I just got to a point where I was really tired of the one I didn't like. I'm giving up.

The present day storyline, the one I did not like, involves a White pop star named Aimee. The narrator serves as her assistant. I liked the messages in this part of the book - it addresses racism, colonialism, White people being performative, misunderstandings of Islam and African countries, etc, etc. I just did not care about Aimee or any of the other characters' stories in that part. I'd also say it gets a bit too didactic through the characters.

The part I did like was the past storyline. The narrator starts …

Review of 'Swing Time: LONGLISTED for the Man Booker Prize 2017' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I read this mostly because I haven't read a Zadie Smith novel in years, even though the blurb about the book didn't sound very enticing. I didn't really click with the navel gazing first person protagonist, but Zadie Smith's writing carried the story enough to get me through it.

Review of 'Swing Time: LONGLISTED for the Man Booker Prize 2017' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This is maybe my favourite Zadie Smith novel I've read so far! She continues to blow me away with her characterisation and how well her characters exist, and in Swing Time, focussing more on one narrator than her other books do, I really appreciated the chance to get to know one main character real well. I started this at about ten in the morning and finished it at eleven at night, I enjoyed it so much!

Review of 'Swing Time: LONGLISTED for the Man Booker Prize 2017' on 'GoodReads'

4 stars

Excellent narrative about family and English black identity, wrapped in a story about the joy of dancing and told with carefully constructed perspectives of rich characters. Smith develops this story gradually, each chapter lending itself to the metaphorical characters and settings. Very enjoyable, sometimes sardonic, often playful.

Review of 'Swing Time: LONGLISTED for the Man Booker Prize 2017' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

When I was younger, after being told over and over again to "write what you know," I decided that it would be more interesting to "Write at the edge of what you know." That is, to write about what you're learning, what you're figuring out, what you don't quite know yet. I tried to do it for a while. It was hard. And what I wrote wasn't very good.

Zadie Smith, on the other hand, has managed to do it, and she has succeeded brilliantly.

Swing Time covers some familiar territory for Smith: family, friendship, London and New York. But she also takes us to an unnamed African country with a pop star named Aimee, where they set out to change the lives in a village by building an girls' school. Much of the latter half of the novel is spent with the narrator (also unnamed) moving between unfamiliar Africa …

Review of 'Swing Time: LONGLISTED for the Man Booker Prize 2017' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

 There are many good reasons to like Swing Time. Its author, Zadie Smith, is everywhere these days with intelligent, thoughtful opinions on a variety of subjects. The book is about two girls growing up in a low-income area of Northwest London. One has a black mother and a white father; the other has a white mother and a black father. Much of the book takes place in West Africa, where the pop star one of the girls works for after college builds a school for girls, and several of the main characters are African.
 We need books with a broad range of characters and cultures like the ones here badly these days, especially when they go beyond having characters of different races and ethnicities come off as being wonderful, pure people who fight for just causes even as they’re oppressed. The characters in Swing Time are as flawed as …

Review of 'Swing Time: LONGLISTED for the Man Booker Prize 2017' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

After reading this, I feel compelled to watch the namesake movie Swing Time, the 1936 Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie. And I enjoyed the references to art and dance in this novel very much.
~~~
It seems appropriate that Swing Time's narrator is nameless, since she seems to live almost entirely through other people. Narrator's job is mostly to react. I did find this story compelling, even though sometimes, I didn't find Narrator very likeable.

The story of Narrator's childhood (in North London) is expressed mostly by way of vignettes involving her best friend, Tracy. They notice each other as little girls, on their first day of school, because they are the same shade of brown, both biracial. The two of them become obsessed with dancing, watching old Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies, along with many other musicals. Tracy is the one with the talent and charisma to …

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