This is Zadie Smith's first novel which garnered stacks of great reviews last year but didn't bag as many prizes as it seemed certain to do, judging from the hype the reviews created at the time. Smith is half-British, half-Jamaican, and the novel focuses on the lives of people who have come half-way across the world from one culture to settle in another. On one level it's a big sweeping family of the story of the Iqbals, the Jones, and the Chalfens, and how their lives connect across the generations. It's also the extremely funny story of the collision of cultures: what happens when children are born in what is, to their parents, an adopted culture and country. Smith writes with confidence and aplomb, and the book fizzes with ideas like a large bag of fireworks. However, it's an over-long novel - 542 pages - and it does suffer under its own weight, wilting and losing direction in the latter chapters. But as first novels go, it's miles and miles better than most of the others in the already crowded field.
