NW really divided critics when it was published in 2012. Smith’s first novel, White Teeth, (published in 2000) was garlanded with awards: it won the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Guardian First Book Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ First Book Award, was included in Time magazine’s 100 best English-language novels published from 1923 to 2005, ranked 39th on The Guardian’s list of the 100 best books of the 21st century, and BBC News included it on its 2019 list of the 100 most influential novels. The reception for NW, following 2002’s The Autograph Man and 2005’s On Beauty was much more muted. But I thought it was outstanding – a complex, mature work that uses experimental structures and techniques without ever seeming to do so for the sake of it.
Set in and inspired by the northwest suburbs of London, NW follows the stories of two friends, Leah Hanwell and Natalie (originally Keisha) Blake. Leah and Natalie grow up in a rough working class estate, Caldwell*. When we are first introduced to her, Leah has not ventured far from her childhood roots, but best friend Natalie has managed to transform herself into a successful barrister. Natalie lives in a nearby but much more affluent neighbourhood. Both women are married, and are apparently content with life.
The novel opens with a vivid scene when Leah falls for a well-practised scam. A young woman knocks at her door asking for money; she is facing a family emergency and needs to get to the local hospital as soon as possible. Leah spends a short time with the woman, eventually giving her money for a cab. Leah’s family, when they hear what has happened, mock her for her gullibility, but she had a connection with the young woman that felt genuine, despite the deception. The incident causes Leah to wonder about her sense of belonging in NW. Has she without knowing it moved away from her working class origins?
The next instalment of the novel follows a former friend of Leah and Natalie’s, Felix Cooper. Although Felix is ostensibly one of the novel’s main characters, this section of the novel feels less engaged; I got the impression that the author was just less interested in Felix. We follow him as he meets a former girlfriend, telling her that he plans to end their residual casual relationship. He needs to put her, and her drug use behind him. On his way home he is mugged and stabbed, and the novel moves on leaving his fate uncertain.
After the Felix scenes, the novel’s focus moves to Natalie Blake. We learn more about her back-story and how she grew up with, and then away from, Leah. Against all expectations she fought her way into university and became a successful barrister. She marries a banker, has two children with him, and appears the ultimate success story. But Natalie/Keisha, as her name suggests, has a secret – she leads a double-life and enjoys clandestine casual sex with strangers, apparently in an attempt to fill the void in her life.
NW is an overtly modernist novel in terms of the various narrative techniques the author uses – but that is not really important. In interviews at the time of the novel’s launch the author explicitly mentioned Joyce and seen in that context his influence is obvious. But neither this fact nor any of the other techniques she uses are in any way intrusive – the reader (or this one at least) never stops to admire the author’s style, the fourth wall is never broken, so engrossing is the story and so accomplished is the writing.
It is possible that White Teeth set expectations so high that it was always going to be hard to follow, but I suspect that if NW appeared today it would be lauded. It is a powerful portrait of a complex city that the author clearly loves and knows intimately.
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*Some reviews of NW talk about it having four central characters – Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan Bogle, (a criminal character who illustrates some of the other life choices people from Leah and Natalie’s class may have taken). Others write about there being three main characters, discounting Nathan, even though he probably features at least as much as Felix. But I believe that this is Leah and Natalie’s novel, that’s where the author’s real interest lies, and the other characters – there are many more than just Felix and Nathan – are secondary. Whether this is a helpful generalisation or not I am unsure, but I think the heart of the novel is the relationship between these two women.
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