Zadie Smith’s ‘Swing Time’ Innovative and Revealing

There is a certain tragedy when—despite the saying that you can pick your friends but you can’t pick your family—a young girl cannot choose her friends. Restrained by hierarchical social systems at school, caged inside changing bodies, suffocated by parents, young girls often have to deal with not only choosing with whom to be friends but also being unable to be friends with those they like. Such is the predicament in which the narrator in Zadie Smith’s fifth novel finds herself as a child; she is jealous of her best friend, Tracey, who represents everything she desires. Little does the main character—who remains unnamed—know that she too represents what Tracey dreams of having. Spanning several decades of the main character’s life, the story follows her as she grows under the shadow of the Tracey and the two other women who rule over different aspects of her life, whether by her choice or not: her Jamaican mother and her celebrity of a boss, Aimee. Smith jumps between different periods of her main character’s life to paint a slow-forming but sincere mosaic of her identity, relationships, and sense of self; though the novel addresses issues of race and womanhood, it nevertheless represents a platform through which anyone can connect with the main character.

The narrator’s relationship to the three important women in her life is central to the novel, and their importance hinges on Smith’s uncanny ability to reveal the layers that both make up common ground and make two people fundamentally different. Tracey and the narrator, for example, are both biracial with the same skin tone, but their experiences as mixed children are completely different. The failure in the relationship lies in their mutual jealousy for the other’s situation without realizing each is the epitome of what the other envies. “‘With everyone else it’s the dad,’ [Tracey] said, and because I knew this to be more or less accurate I could think of nothing more to say. ‘When your dad’s white it means—’” Had Tracey finished her sentence, she might have said, “stability, comfort, presence,”which is exactly what the narrator had that Tracey didn’t: a white father who didn’t neglect his responsibilities to his daughter. Meanwhile, the narrator is jealous of Tracey’s freedom and maturity, failing to realize that Tracey is free and mature because she has had no other choice but to be, growing up with a single white mother and a constantly-imprisoned black father.

Similarly, Smith gracefully describes the narrator’s complex struggles with her relationship to her mother, a Jamaican immigrant whose ideals simply do not overlap with her daughter’s, to the detriment of their relationship. Where her mother wants her to go to the best schools, the narrator fails her entry exams and pushes to audition for a dance school, like Tracey; where her mother wants her to settle down and build a concrete life for herself, the narrator travels around the world, never belonging in any one place and wading through life in the shadow of her boss. While her mother tries to teach her how other people live, the pair lack common ground due to a disconnect that ultimately denies the two the possibility of mutual understanding: “‘...Poverty is not just a headline, my love, it’s a lived reality, on the ground—and education is at the heart of it.’ [said my mother]. ‘I know what poverty is, Mum.’ [I replied]. My mother smiled sadly, and bit down on a forkful of food. ‘No, dear, you don’t.’” It is precisely this beautifully portrayed distance that causes the narrator to grow up too fast, as well as to constantly seek female guidance and connection to no avail. Searching for a mother but finding none in her eccentric boss, Aimee, the narrator becomes one of the “tragic heroes who have no choices before them, no alternative routes, only unavoidable fates,” like the one she eventually faces.

A book centered around relationships and race is no novelty in Smith’s bibliography, and yet her dedication to changing the way she tells stories from novel to novel is what makes her so deserving of the praise she has received. Her attempts at innovation within her own repertoire of styles not only coincide with but also complement and enhance the content of whatever story she is trying to tell. While Smith employed both first- and third-person narration in “NW”, “Swing Time” marks the first time Smith writes completely in the first person. Furthermore, Smith’s refusal to name her narrator allows her to redefine the things that characterize a person; a name is central to anyone’s identity, but not here. For what is a person’s name compared to her life, memories, relationships, thoughts, and ignorance?

“Swing Time” may be her fifth novel, but Smith is far from losing her edge. This book, perhaps more so than all of her previous novels, succeeds in its attempt to touch others. Be it race; relationships with friends, family, or coworkers; heartbreak; or attempting to find yourself, there is something in “Swing Time” that any reader will be able to identify with, especially because Smith provides a way to connect through a lack of connection. Two very similar people on paper can live completely different lives, while two people who seemingly have nothing in common might actually understand each other best. Like the dance at which Tracey excels, the dance the narrator can only dream of being good at, Smith’s words have a movement in them that allows Smith to capture the essence of the subtle intricacies of life.

—Staff writer Mila Gauvin Il can be reached at mila.gauvin@thecrimson.com.