Leah Hanwell is married to hairdresser Michel, doesn’t want to have a baby, has an administrative job and is jolted out of her subdued life when Shar, an addict, pounds on her door waving a gas bill, and shouting that her (Shar’s) mum needs to go to hospital. She matches that with portraits of contemporary women, with contemporary dilemmas and distress. Smith writes powerfully about young men, what they think, what they think they want, what they face, how they f- up, what can they or can’t they escape and the fragile threads therein. Technically, there’s no connection between Felix and the two women characters except they all “went Brayton” or are Caldwell people. “Someone behind him sighed he moved aside quickly with the shame of a Londoner who has inconvenienced, even for a moment, another Londoner.“ Consider Felix in a tiny moment with his fellow Londoner: Smith is a champion observer and chronicler of the moment. The statistics, incidents, faceless names and bracketed ages become someone’s son, brother, lover. We go further into his corner, inside the front rooms of council flats, further again - practically under the tongue - of an ordinary young bloke, doing his business, rising and stumbling, facing things that some never encounter beyond the typeset lines of a newspaper. Article contentīrilliant! The recalibration of London from and into one young man’s corner of it. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

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Nw by zadie smith