Years ago, a colleague of mine carried Swing Time into work every single day for a whole term. I didn't know her then, and I assume that if she carried the same book around for three months she couldn't have been reading it.
I later found out that she carried it around for so long because because she had loved Zadie Smith's other books, but found this one an absolute slog.
Having finally read it, I can now officially agree with her. Swing Time has nothing of the brilliance of White Teeth, or even of NW. Yet, it's not an effortless uncommitted read like The Autograph Man, and I even liked On Beauty better than this.
For me, this book was proof of the fact that good (actually, often great) writing can't save a bad novel, and I don't really care about the bickering of dancing friends who have an unresolved rivalry since their school years.
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