Feel free Essays

Review by New York Times Review

TIME PIECES: A Dublin Memoir, by John Banville. (Knopf, $26.95.) The Booker Prize-winning novelist wanders Ireland's capital city, recalling people and places that still live in his memory. Scattered throughout are suitably atmospheric photographs by Paul Joyce. THE REAL LIFE OF THE PARTHENON, by Patricia Vigderman. (Mad Creek/Ohio State University Press, paper, $21.95.) An American scholar visits classic sites of the ancient world in a book that's part travelogue, part memoir and part musing on our complex, contested cultural heritage. SMOKETOWN: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance, by Mark Whitaker. (Simon & Schuster, $30.) Whitaker recounts the untold history of Pittsburgh's role as a mecca for African-Americans in the mid-20th century - from figures like Billy Strayhorn and August Wilson to the local newspaper, The Courier, which covered it all. FEEL FREE: Essays, byZadie Smith. (Penguin, $28.) Deftly roving from literature and philosophy to art, pop music and film, Smith's incisive new collection showcases her exuberance and range while making a cohesive argument for social and aesthetic freedom. A GIRL IN EXILE: Requiem for Linda B., by Ismail Kadare. Translated by John Hodgson. (Counterpoint, $25.) The famed Albanian writer, and perpetual Nobel Prize contender, produces a novel that grapples with the supernatural in a story set against a backdrop of interrogation, exile and thwarted lives. AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE, by Tayari Jones. (Algonquin, $26.95.) Roy and Celestial are a young black couple in Atlanta "on the come up," as he puts it, when he's convicted of a rape he did not commit and sentenced to 12 years in prison. The unfairness of the years stolen from this couple by a great cosmic error forms the novel's slow burn. MONSTER PORTRAITS, by Del and Sofia Samatar. (Rose Metal, paper, $14.95.) Del and Sofia Samatar are brother and sister, and their beautiful new book, which braids Del's art and Sofia's text, explores monstrosity and evil while inviting a discussion about race and diaspora. THE NIGHT DIARY, by Veera Hiranandani. (Dial, $16.99; ages 8 to 12.) A 12-year-old refugee and her family make their way to India's border during the bloody events of Partition in 1947. THE HEART AND MIND OF FRANCES PAULEY, by April Stevens. (Schwartz & Wade, $16.99; ages 8 to 12.) This understated middle grade debut features a dreamy 11-year-old who spends hours among the rocks in her backyard. What the book lacks in plot, it more than makes up in observation, mood and full-on feeling. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]

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Review by Booklist Review

Smith introduces her second essay collection, following Changing My Mind (2009), by noting that the pieces gathered here were written during the Obama presidency, a bygone world. Most were first published in the New York Review of Books or the New Yorker, and all are candidly personal, socially attuned, witty, rueful, intellectually radiant, and seductively anecdotal. An incisive case for supporting public libraries is followed by an intimate look at what is being lost in climate change. Smith assesses the shock of Brexit, parses the zeitgeist of Generation Facebook, and dissects the conundrums of being biracial, experiences that inform her profile of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele. Her musings on autobiographical fiction include keen readings of Philip Roth and Karl Ove Knausgård, while, on the art front, she considers the work of sculptor Sarah Sze. A confessional about Joni Mitchell is followed by a highly improbable and enjoyably fruitful pairing of Justin Bieber and philosopher Martin Buber, while reflections on dance shed light on her novel, Swing Time (2016). Smith's astute, gracefully delving inquiries remind us that freedom must be cultivated and defended.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

British actress Amuka-Bird channels both the public persona and literary essence of novelist and essayist Smith in giving voice to this sprawling collection of nonfiction works. The essays vary in topic and include criticism of visual and literary arts, musings on pop culture, and incisive takes on current politics on both sides of the Atlantic; Amuka-Bird handles the sometimes swift transitions gracefully. She adds an especially evocative touch in her reading of Smith's works that tackle racial and cultural identity. For Smith's experimental piece on the tortured life of music legend Billie Holiday, which is written from the first-person perspective of Holiday, Amuka-Bird provides a chilling rendition of the singer's bluesy, conversational cadence. When Smith recounts recent interviews with entertainers such as rapper Jay-Z and comedian and director Jordan Peele, Amuka-Bird doesn't shy away from adding biting edges to their voices. Not every piece of this stylistically wide-ranging collection translates easily into the audio format, but Amuka-Bird's talent cannot be denied. A Penguin hardcover. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Smith, primarily known as a fiction writer (Swing Time, NW, etc.), has added a dazzling second collection (after Changing My Mind) of nonfiction to her already impressive accomplishments. Beginning with essays on the value of public libraries in the digital age, Smith offers penetrating commentary on such subjects as Brexit, Facebook, and climate change, in pieces drawn mainly from those previously published in The New Yorker and New York Review of Books. Venturing into pop culture, she explores the dance styles of Michael Jackson and Madonna alongside those of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly-a bold but intriguing comparison. Smith's most compelling essays feature art and literary criticism. In an extensive analysis of British-Ghanaian painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, the author compares the painter's ability to provoke a narrative to that of the novelist. Works of writers, such as J.G. Ballard and Hanif Kureishi, are treated as refreshing departures from the traditional canon. VERDICT While Smith's personal approach to essay writing may not please everyone, it successfully analyses art and life through the prospective of the novelist. Fans of Smith's writing, as well as readers of thoughtful nonfiction, will enjoy this book. [See Prepub Alert, 8/14/17.]-Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The author complements her celebrated fiction with an equally compelling collection of essays and reviews embracing literary, art, film, and cultural criticism, amplified by a dissection of the vagaries of modern life.In her second book of essays, Smith (Swing Time, 2016, etc.) likens her wide-ranging yet unified pieces to thinking aloud while fretting she might make herself sound ludicrousfar from it; if only all such thoughts were so cogent and unfailingly humane. The author is honest, often impassioned, always sober. Though she disclaims any advanced academic degrees or formal journalistic training, she produces sharp analyses of contemporary issues that are no less substantial for being personalized. Smith executes these pieces with consummate skill, though her critical faculties seem to take a hiatus when rhapsodizing over certain pop entertainerse.g., comparing Madonna and Michael Jackson (as dancers) to Astaire and Rogers, to the Nicholas brothers, to Nureyev and Baryshnikov. But these are exceptions. Collected from essays published chiefly in the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, all during the eight years of the Barack Obama presidency, the essays risk being dated, but Smith's observations are timeless. Freedom, in one form or another, is at the core of the book, as are identity, race, class, family, art, meaning, and the many permutations of cultural vandalism. She opens with a defense of libraries in a digitalized world and closes with her eccentric, justly renowned musings "Find Your Beach" and "Joy." In between, she offers lovely portraits of her parents, an astute look at the comedy duo Key and Peele, a brilliant critique of the art of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, appreciations of such disparate British authors as J.G. Ballard, Hanif Kureishi, and Geoff Dyer, and a riff on Joni Mitchell that morphs into a self-revelatory piece on "attunement," rich with philosophical ideas.Judiciously political, Smith wears her liberalism gracefully, though with qualifications. She is never less than a formidable intellect, with an imposing command of literary and artistic canons. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Brother from Another Mother The wigs on Key & Peele are the hardest-working hairpieces in show business. Individually made, using pots of hair clearly labeled-- "Short Black/Brown, Human," "Long Black, Human"--they are destined for the heads of a dazzling array of characters: old white sportscasters and young Arab gym posers; rival Albanian/ Macedonian restaurateurs; a couple of trash-talking, church-going, African-American ladies; and the President of the United States, to name a few. Between them, Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele play all these people, and more, on their hit Comedy Central sketch show, now in its fourth season. (They are also the show's main writers and executive producers.) They eschew the haphazard whatever's-in-the-costume-box approach--enshrined by Monty Python and still operating on Saturday Night Live ( SNL )--in favor of a sleek, cinematic style. There are no fudged lines, crimes against drag, wobbling sets, or corpsing. False mustaches do not hang limply: a strain of yak hair lends them body and shape. Editing is a three-month process, if not longer. Subjects are satirized by way of precise imitation--you laugh harder because it looks like the real thing. On one occasion, a black actress, a guest star on the show, followed Key into his trailer, convinced that his wig was his actual hair. (Key--to steal a phrase from Nabokov--is "ideally bald.") "And she wouldn't leave until she saw me take my hair off, because she thought that I and all the other guest stars were fucking with her," he recalled. "She 's, like, 'Man, that is your hair. That's your hair. You got it done in the back like your mama would do.' I said, 'I promise you this is glued to my head.' And she was squealing with delight. She was going, 'Oh! This is crazy! This is crazy!' She just couldn't believe it." Call it method comedy. The two men are physically incongruous. Key is tall, light brown, dashingly high-cheekboned and LA fit; Peele is shorter, darker, more rounded, cute like a teddy bear. Peele, who is thirty-five, wears a nineties slacker uniform of sneakers, hoodie and hipster specs. Key is fond of sharply cut jackets and shiny shirts--like an ad exec on casual Friday--and looks forty-three the way Will Smith looked forty-three, which is not much. Before he even gets near hair and makeup, Key can play black, Latino, South Asian, Native American, Arab, even Italian. He is biracial, the son of a white mother and a black father, as is Peele. But though Peele 's phenotype is less obviously malleable--you might not guess that he 's biracial at all-- he is so convincing in voice and gesture that he makes you see what isn't really there. His Obama impersonation is uncanny, and it's the voice and hands, rather than the makeup lightening his skin, that allow you to forget that he looks nothing like the president. One of his most successful creations--a nightmarish, overly entitled young woman called Meegan--is an especially startling transformation: played in his own dark-brown skin, she somehow still reads as a white girl from the Jersey Shore. Between chameleonic turns, the two men appear as themselves, casually introducing their sketches or riffing on them with a cozy intimacy, as if recommending a video on YouTube, where they are wildly popular. A sketch show may seem a somewhat antique format, but it turns out that its traditional pleasures--three-minute scenes, meme-like catchphrases--dovetail neatly with online tastes. Averaging 2 million on-air viewers, Key and Peele have a huge second life online, where their visually polished, byte-size, self- contained skits--easily extracted from each twenty-two-minute episode--rack up views in the many millions. Given these numbers, it's striking how little online animus they inspire, despite their aim to make fun of everyone--men and women, all sexualities, any subculture, race or nation--in repeated acts of equal-opportunity offending. They don't attract anything approaching the kind of critique a sitcom like Girls seems to generate just by existing. What they get, Peele conceded, as if it were a little embarrassing, is "a lot of love." Partly, this is the license we tend to lend to (male) clowns, but it may also be a consequence of the antic freedom inherent in sketch, which, unlike sitcom, can present many different worlds simultaneously. This creative liberty took on a physical aspect one warm LA morning in mid-November, as Key and Peele requisitioned half a suburban street in order to film two sketches in neighboring ranch houses: a domestic scene between Meegan and her lunkhead boyfriend, Andre (played by Key), and a genre spoof of the old Sidney Poitier classic Guess Who's Coming to Dinner . "One of our bits makes you laugh? We have you, and you will back us up," Peele suggested, during a break in filming. "And, if something offends you, you will excuse it." Sitting at a trestle table in the overgrown back garden of "Meegan's Home," he was in drag, scarfing down lunch with the cast and crew, and yet--for a man wearing a full face of makeup and false eyelashes--he seemed almost anonymous among them, speaking in a whisper and gesturing not at all. On set, Peele is notably introverted, as mild and reasonable in person as he tends toward extremity when in character. Looking down at his cleavage, he murmured, "You often hear comments, as a black man, that there 's something emasculating about putting on a dress. It may be technically true, but I've found it so fun. It's not a downgrade in any way." When Key sat down beside Peele, he, too, seemed an unlikely shock merchant, although for the opposite reason. Outgoing, exhaustingly personable, he engages frenetically with everyone: discussing fantasy football with a cameraman, rhapsodizing about the play An Octoroon with his PR person and ardently agreeing with his comedy partner about the curious demise of the short-lived TV show Freaks and Geeks ("ahead of its time"), the present sociohistorical triumph of nerd culture, and a core comic principle underpinning many of their sketches. ("It's what we call 'peas in a pod': two characters who feel just as passionate about the same thing.") Excerpted from Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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