Too frequently my objection to short stories is that they leave you feeling there was so much more to say but it was cut short by the author in service of keeping the story "short". Well, Zadie Smith is not one of those authors. She tells this story of an African immigrant who regularly passes the Embassy of Cambodia as she steals a rare moment of personal time, without leaving a thing unsaid. The ending is superb.

Pock. Smash. ( )

Short novella, or a long short story. Lovely book about domestic servitude in the Uk and a love story ( )

A novella that can easily be read in one sitting in which Zadie Smith explores the hardships facing immigrants in London, It is likely that Fatou is an illegal immigrant, although this is never clarified and is employed by the Derewal family of husband, wife and three children, as a maid and cleaner.
The relaxed nature of an ongoing game of badminton at the embassy is contrasted with Fatou’s struggle through life in Africa, Italy and London.
Fatou’s precarious position is shown by the passing reference to the family retaining her passport and paying her no wages, but giving her meals and a room, and then unexpectedly firing her. However, Andrew, an immigrant friend she has met in church, shows kindness by offering to help with accommodation and finding her work.

Short, and leaves you wanting more. ( )

Picks up a theme of NW.
(1) The character Fatou is Natalie-like. That is: religion as very present but stifling (having sexual feelings is not polite, decent).
(2) Also Smith is searching for an alternative for the authorial voice (I'm no theoretician, but what in old age was the all-knowing narrator and now, I believe, usually is called "voice"), this time it is "we from Willesden".
(3) Behind the "we" I find her trying to "depict experience" (quote (by heart) from an interview at the time of NW). At one time the authorial voice is reproved by the neighborhood 'we', as if Smith acknowledges it is still an 'I' impersonating a collective neighborhood feeling, at other times not. Fatou is strong like Natalie was. No time for sentimentality in Willesden, life is too harsh for that.

Interesting conversations at the Tunisian restaurant. In earlier decades this would have been a "social realist" novel / novella, about characters from "the working class". That's what I like about the conversation about world politics (Cambodia, Holocaust): it is at the same time one by social climbers, who have to make up their minds without 'cultural capital', without the benefit (or sometimes plague) of a cultured upbringing, and an adolescent/young discussion too. Fatou is at the same time judging the qualities of her male friend Andrew as a possible partner.

And, not to forget an important circumstance, they are living at the social bottom.

"Depicting experience" too is that, like in NW, we are in the harsh present, a present open to an unknown future (pock, smash).

In NW I was wondering about the place of religion in the novel. There is thread of the catholic Maria in the novel and Our Lady of Willesden (or how she is called). Here Fatou is baptized (and you don't have to write about that, so it interests Smith) and evidently hopes something more would happen. ( )