“You’re either for me or against me, thought Alex-Li Tandem, referring to the daylight, and more generally, to the day.”
Apparently I initially published without my review! Crazy!
This is a reread for me. I first read this soon after it came out and soon after I devoured Zadie Smith’s debut novel White Teeth. At the time, I wasn’t really sure what to make of this book, and I think I have a better sense of it now, maybe because I am older or maybe because it’s a reread. I am also not in the throes of a literary crush trying figure what to make of a book very different from the previous work. Also, Zadie Smith has written several more books of both fiction and nonfiction, and I have read most of them, and I think I understand more now.
Anyway, this book is ostensibly about an autograph collector living in London where he plies his trade (sometimes literally trading autographs). He’s got a small collection and a growing sense of expertise in the small field. He’s sent an autograph from an elusive long-retired film star that he cannot verify because so few, if any, of her autographs exist in the wild (alongside many fakes) and so he begins investigating the possibilities, leading us eventually to New York where he meets her, and back to London where news of her death (not a real one) offers up a lucrative possibility.
And, by the way, what else is going on? He’s trying to finish a book he’s been writing about the “Jewishness” and “Goyishness” of people and things in the world, classifications that exist irrespective of any actual Jewishness or Goyishness.
It’s a strange book, and it’s a second novel (if you get me), and it’s ambitious. It’s also ambitious because of how very not like the first smash hit was for Zadie Smith.
