Some portions, especially in the middle, are tediously drawn, where the elements appear doing nothing else but fill the pages. But the overdose of details robs off a considerable sheen off the reading pleasure. There is a certain tenderness in her narrator’s call, almost like an impervious actor defeated from inside. Her seamless fusion of cultural elements belies the sharp sting of race fall outs: the friendships and relationship she depicts are not devoid of the disjoint perspectives that emerge from exercising different racial hegemonies. But Smith’s skill lies in her smart writing which bridges the gaps to some extent. The casualty in such arrangements is usually empathy, which is suspended much before its formation due to the breakneck pace of its beholders. The narrator keeps swinging between today and yesterday, and day after tomorrow and day before yesterday.

A prominent thread that one might notice in this expansive narrative, is the non-linear time line. And this undulation is captured with a sharp lens at times and a shaky hand at other. From rapturously following a teenage pop sensation, serving her fashionable cause of educating children in a remote West African village, to returning in her mature years to her own mother and Tracey’s children- our narrator lives a life oscillating at the hems of reward and agony. Right from abandoning her ambitious mother and genial father and gravitating towards Tracey in her teens, to landing a job at a music channel by severing ties with the very same girl. This unequal ledge of talent sets precedent to the rest of the story and throughout her life, our narrator registers experiences, always a tad less vibrant than she had hoped she would come by. Narrated in first person, she opens her rendezvous with Tracey at the tender age of seven, when all that mattered to the duo was dance, at which, Tracey was much better. This is a story primarily about a brown girl in London whose life arcs diverse places, people and emotions somehow keeping another brown girl named Tracey at its epicenter. Zadie Smith’s narrator in ‘Swing Time’ attempts to hold this fleeting, substantial thing in her hand and poke it for its secrets over a good 35-40 years. There is something about every life: ripe with memories, rife with punctures, crowded yet distinct, deceptively omniscient but a puzzle to its only custodian.

Swing time review