C’s Reviews > Swing Time > Status Update

"I should have been the closest thing he had to an ally, but every conversation we attempted went awry somehow, the way he understood the world was so genuinely alien to me that it felt as if he occupied a parallel reality, which I didn't doubt was the real one"

"He gives her class, she gives him sex. Was this a general rule? Did all friendships---all relations---involve this discreet and mysterious exchange of qualities, this exchange of power? Did it extend to peoples and nations or was it a thing that happened only between individuals? What did my father give my mother---and vice versa?"

“Even I, who had been to her house only once before, managed to feel more possessive about Lily’s things than Lily herself.” LOL too real

“The white girls—who had generally been included in the playground mania—were now mysteriously no longer included: it was as if they had never been involved in the first place.” This is so painfully accursed and astute—like the vibe shift that lets u know it’s going to get dark

I’m surprised, this book is kind of not very well-written so far. I’m hoping the contents of the plot will save it but on a narrative structure level it feels very thrown together

Maybe this is crazy, maybe I’m crazy, but I feel like Zadie Smith really thinks poorly of black men