Because I posted about White Teeth earlier in the week, I figured it was a great time to recommend Zadie Smith for #ReadWomen2014, despite my own admitted ambivalence about her. Maybe ‘ambivalence’ is too strong a term-- I really have enjoyed White Teeth quite a lot, but there have certainly been passages that have dragged along, despite the deftness and wit of the prose. I think what I struggled with in both White Teeth and NW was an inconsistency in my response- I was gripped so much more by certain characters and their passages than others. If White Teeth had been entirely from Irie’s perspective, for example, or NW from Natalie’s, I think I would have engaged with them more fully. Even so, I would strongly recommend either title, and have every intention of reading On Beauty soon. Part of the reason I recommend her so strongly is that I don’t think it’s possible to be a literate young woman in the US today without having read Zadie Smith. She is so ubiquitous and serves as a cultural touchstone -- she gets brief shout-outs on HBO’s ‘Girls’ and ‘Bored to Death,’ two comedy series about writers in NYC. Her essays deserve as much attention as her novels, and any fan of her would do well to subscribe to the New Yorker to enjoy a fuller breadth of her work.