![]() And the music! If one were to make a playlist of the references, one would have a greatest hits of black music: from Gambian drummers to Cab Calloway to Michael Jackson to Rakim. The narrator’s journey, from gritty estate to glittering globe and back again, is the juicy stuff of which film adaptations are made. It is by Aimee’s side that she travels the world, jetting from winters to summers.įor its plot alone, Swing Time makes for truly marvellous reading. It gives little away to say that she does, becoming an assistant to a pop star called Aimee. As with the Italian bestseller, the talented friend is the tortured one – prematurely sexual, rebellious at school, ungoverned at home – while the less gifted is an able student, determined to make it out of the neighbourhood. Residents of neighbouring housing estates in London, the pair meet at a community dance class, one (the unnamed narrator) clever and self-doubting, the other (Tracey) confident and self-destructive. ![]() ![]() A “best friend bildungsroman” in the Elena Ferrante mould, the novel tells the story of two girls growing up on the wrong side of town. ![]() Swing Time is Zadie Smith’s fifth novel and for my money her finest. ![]()
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