Feel Free: Essays

This was an odd selection for my book club and I wonder what we're going to talk about. Individual essays may spark conversation, but there are a lot of them, so we won't be able to do the book justice. I am now officially a Zadie Smith fan, having read two of her essay collections but only one of her novels. Must read more of them. This book feels like at least two different books in one, and it is helpfully divided into sections, so the reader will see lumped together essays about art, or books, or more personal essays in the final section. In any case, Smith's skill is on display.

I found some of these essays to be fascinating and thought provoking (the one on Facebook, the one about living in Italy, the one about public libraries) and some to be more tedious (the ones about art, the dance ones). These were hit or miss for me but I do like Smith's particular style of writing.

Zadie offers up a collection of her essays here but what's interesting it that she notes in the foreword that all of them were written during the Obama presidency and therefore a product of an already bygone world. An interesting prompt for an essay I'd wish she'd written as well.

I am the poor reader that is willing to meet the author part of the way but cannot subsist on language alone. That is to say Smith scores some easy hits for me with her essays on Jay-Z, Key and Peele and I loved her examination between writers and dancers and she convinced me that I need to read more art criticism, especially if it's done as well as her.

On the other hand her Harpers Magazine review of books I had no desire to read. While they are perfectly tuned to the specific style expected of the magazine they otherwise left me nodding off. Like any collection it's uneven. It's also a doorstopper of a read. But what shines is the warmth in which she speaks to the reader, perhaps a Zadie from a pre-Brexit, pre-Trump world.