The novel follows the loosely intertwined lives of the narrator (who remains unnamed) and her childhood friend Tracey-both brown girls from Northwest London. And I can imagine that these types of “good intentions” exist also in real life, not only in novels.It's been a while since I read a book that I couldn't put down, but as soon as I started Zadie Smith's Swing Time, I felt an immediate sense of solidarity with the characters and found myself completely immersed. My understanding was that the aim of the project was mostly to strengthen the brand of the celebrity rather than make a real change in the community. However, this project did not consider the most urgent needs of the local girls nor the local culture and politics. The example in the book concerns a celebrity willing to help a rural community from Africa, and the chosen solution was to build a school for girls. Nonetheless, not all was sad and problematic! An interesting character is the narrator’s mother, a black woman who becomes so active in the community and willing to make a change that she becomes an important politician.įor my point of view, one of the most interesting insights from Swing Time is that making a real sustainable change in a community takes a lot of effort and cannot be a short-term project. What stuck with me while reading Swing Time was that it tackled a wide variety of social issues – from discrimination and lack of integration of mixed-race people, children with parents in jail, illegal adoptions and sexual assault. I felt disoriented quite often, attempting to put together the pieces of the puzzle.
This is an aspect that increases the complexity of the reading experience, on top of the many topics tackled. The story takes place in London, New York and West Africa (most probably Gambia), and it goes backwards and forwards on the time axis. However, this mix of themes actually kept me reading on. On one hand, I struggled to understand what the book was really about – it touched on so many topics that it felt like a mix of themes without a clear red thread. I have mixed feelings about this book, as I was a bit disappointed.
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