Let’s get envy out of the way first. While many of us struggled to achieve anything during the first weeks of lockdown, barely baking a loaf of banana bread or completing a workout with Joe Wicks, Zadie Smith managed to write a whole book. It is a very slim book – 82 pages; six essays – but it’s a book, nonetheless. Anyone who feels piqued that this might be a money-spinner, though, should note that the author’s royalties are being donated to charity. Besides, Smith generously suggests that writing is simply something to do, no better or worse than baking, sewing a dress or completing “all the levels on Minecraft”.
These essays have been written from the standpoint of an impassioned reader. This is not new territory for Smith, who declared in an earlier collection of essays, Changing My Mind (2009), that: “Reading has always been my passion, my pleasure, and I am constitutionally drawn to any thesis that gives power to readers, increasing their freedom of movement.”
