NW is a book that defies encapsulation. It has been called a Bildungsroman, and yet it flirts with mystery, positions itself in intense realism, and occasionally parodies the romance genre. Ostensibly, it is about four Londoners (Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan) who hail from the same fictional Caldwell council estate, trying to establish a life for themselves away from it. But this description can hardly do justice to the cacophony of voices that populate this novel.
Most obviously, this book examines characters whose identities are caught in a mire of clashing cultures. Leah identifies herself as “the only white girl” at work and is herself the daughter of conflicted Irish and British origin. Leah’s best friend, Natalie (aka Keisha) is lambasted for abandoning her roots after she changes her name, trains as a lawyer, and marries a man who himself is “made of parts Natalie considered mutually exclusive” with an “indescribable accent” evoking Caribbean origin and Italian upbringing.
This examination is most impressively rendered in Smith’s dazzling use of dialogue. Language, accent and tone are shown explicitly as what they so frequently are: markers of cultural identity that, known as such, cause bewilderment, and even consternation to the characters themselves. Annie, a down-and-out who hails from old money, has a voice that “worked a spell” and allows her to “fall and fall and fall and still never quite hit the ground,” whilst the successful Natalie, in a moment of poignant self-reflection, notices her slip into the slang of her childhood when she talks to a kid smoking in a park: “She had not ended a sentence in ‘man’ for quite some time.”
If the characters’ linguistic paranoia marks their difficulty in orientating themselves on a personal level, then perhaps as an extension it also reflects their difficulty in angling themselves in relation to others. Leah and Natalie, whose developing relationship is charted in ‘host’, a series of 184 vignettes, move from a state of simplicity in which “they were best friends bonded for life by a dramatic event” to a more fraught relationship as they begin to doubt each other’s choices in life. However, in a move that provides a certain narrative satisfaction, their differences seem at least partially resolved by the ending when they are again united by a shared experience.
Smith’s novel is not simple, and it is not self-sufficient. Rather it throws its questions to the wind and asks the reader to watch the chips settle where they may or spin out of sight though not out of mind. It does not resolve much, but it satisfies, and it is genuinely beautiful.
