If only achieving Smith’s mastery was as easy as following the instructions on a class handout. An A+ to her for reaching the goals of stirring empathy ('the aim and purpose of all stories, everywhere, always') and of drawing in the reader. A few stories with a surreal bent play less to her strengths but, overall, Grand Union, had me feeling like a fourth-grader, lying 'upon the floor, reading delightedly from a book, lost in it completely'.
Some... more traditional stories have landed in Smith’s first collection, Grand Union, and while still brilliant on the level of the sentence, the paragraph, the often hilarious skewering of humanity, they’re the least successful ones here, sour notes in a collection in which the best pieces achieve something less narrative and closer to brilliance. The more traditional stories become most interesting as examples of a mode from which Smith seems to be evolving away ... Thrillingly, the best work in Grand Union is some of the newest. Among its previously unpublished stories and the two most recently published ones, we find the surreal, the nonlinear, the essayistic, the pointillist ... For a lesser writer, we might wish more avidly for an editor to have stepped in to carve the book into something more specific, more pointed. But Smith’s stature will have made many of her readers completists and her artistic development a matter of interest. While the collection might not coalesce as a unit, it contains some of Smith’s most vibrant, original fiction, the kind of writing she’ll surely be known for. Some of these stories provide hints that everything we’ve seen from her so far will one day be considered her 'early work,' that what lies ahead is less charted territory, wilder and less predictable and perhaps less palatable to the casual reader but exactly what she needs to be writing.
In reviewing Zadie Smith’s diverse first book of short stories, it would be outrageous not to praise the author’s versatility ... Smith’s readers should get some credit too, however, for their fortitude. These are not pages to relax into; personally, I felt as if I was on a gruelling psychological training course in which I was constantly under assault from different aspects of Smith’s talent. For all their brilliance, only the author, surely, could engage with each of the 19 stories equally ...the collection’s masterpieces are the rather more traditional stories. These employ prose so limpid to describe unvarnished reality that it might be in the early novellas of Truman Capote, and conclude with illuminating twists that could make Guy de Maupassant envious ... The true spice of this collection is not its variety; it is Smith’s glorious viciousness.
It’s striking how far many novelists of Smith’s generation have veered away from the dizzying, wide-canvas, broadly satirical, knowing fictions of their youth ... [Smith's] recent writings have a melancholy register. Despite its title—note the imperative mood of Feel Free—her last essay collection was pervaded by an aura of dutifulness. There’s a greater sense of liberation in the stories that make up Grand Union. Without having to generate the narrative thrust to sustain a novel or to make an argument she’ll have to attach her name to, Smith tinkers with ideas, adopts disparate modes of story-telling, and pursues various larks ... The best of these stories have a loose, diaristic quality, mixing the personal and political. Since the politics of Smith’s two homes—London and Manhattan—haven’t exactly been inspiring of late, there’s a general tone of comic resignation ... Grand Union is Smith’s best book since NW, but there are a few misfires, stories that never transcend their premises ... 'Now More Than Ever,' with the distance of its narrator, its playful tone, and its allegorical games, heralds the sort of fiction we’re likely to be seeing more of in an age that doesn’t particularly cherish realist treatments of ambiguity. It’s time for hysterical realism to return from beyond the pale.
About one-third of the 19 short stories in Grand Union, Zadie Smith’s first collection, have 'really got something'. That quotation comes from one of them, the melancholy, mischievous 'Blocked' ... The best stories include 'Sentimental Education', in which Smith is typically brilliant on sex and shame ... There’s nothing here that’s not at least goodish. Smith’s baseline is significantly higher than average. But we need better than goodish from our best writers. Too many of these stories feel like half-baked parallel projects ... Such is Smith’s stature that she can noodle away, like the over-beloved boyfriend who fancies himself a guitarist ... The title is a misnomer. There’s no grand union here. On the contrary, the stories are stylistically so eclectic you wonder what is Smith’s style, exactly ... It’s clearly a good thing when a writer refuses to calcify. But five novels and one short-story collection into her career, you’d be hard pressed to characterise what is uniquely Zadie Smith. It’s beginning to feel like a problem.
... some [stories] are more invigorating than others. All, however, display her shimmering prose, her penchant for cogent observations, and her fondness for metaphors. They are lit—in every sense of the word—drunk with spot-on characterization, and, in the new vernacular, exciting narratives set in a variety of settings. They challenge the reader to pay attention ... The familiar bear re-reading; the new ones offer various voices and perspectives. The best of them are inviting, effective, and successful ... Smith’s grand gift to readers. What she accomplishes over the range of the nineteen stories is astonishing. She blinds them with dazzling prose and breaks their hearts with richly enhanced characters.
These masterful tales impress, engage and occasionally infuriate as Smith brings her dazzling wit and acute sensitivity to bear. These stories are ready to grapple with the complex times we live in ... If anything serves this collection best, it’s the humor that runs through the stories like a lazy river. All genres are Smith’s to play with, from fables to science fiction to a realistic conversation between two friends. Even the few weaker efforts still brim with ideas and intelligence. No subjects are off-limits.
The format allows for a set of mostly (but not entirely) disparate narrative nuggets, and Smith’s voice is always on the page, even as those pages wander to many different places ... Many stories start by dropping the reader squarely in the center of unfolding action which creates an urgency, a current to catch up with. And while not every entry in this work sings, the ones that do are an entire chorus. Smart and cleverly paced, this collection in some places is so contemporary it crackles, and elsewhere is a timeless snapshot of a few small moments. Likely to be a classic due to Smith’s reputation, the whip-smart humanity rendered here stands strong on its own.
I read Grand Union, but I doubt I’ll ever read it again ... [several stories] feel more like feints than stories. If you read them without authorial attribution, I’m not sure you’d guess they were hers. And without her name attached, I’m not sure they’d find their way into print ... Given that a quarter of Grand Union consists of these oddities and false starts, it makes sense to conclude that the book doesn’t cohere the way the finest collections of stories can. If one reads only these pieces, the book can feel like a particular kind of disappointment from a writer who has rarely let her fans down; it’s a miscellany. But Grand Union does have more traditional stories as well, and of them, 'The Lazy River' stands in contrast to Smith’s handful of experiments, showing what this author is capable of doing with a few thousand words ... When Smith is good, she’s superb ... Too many of the stories here just don’t yield or seem to require the reader at all. Sometimes, Smith is still willing to make herself vulnerable through pure sincerity ... It’s fine to see her falter; I do not question her talent. Lamenting her turn toward the arch or the experimental is as fruitless as regretting Joni Mitchell’s dalliance with synth-pop or jazz. Still, I find myself hoping that Smith’s next song will be a little sweeter.
True literary excellence is rare. At any given time, there exists a relative handful of writers capable of creating legitimately exceptional prose...Zadie Smith is one such writer ... a magnificently wide-ranging selection of stories so diverse and divergent that it sometimes seems that their only shared quality – the one thing that marks them as the work of a singular author – is their excellence ... if anything, the exceedingly high quality of this work is being undersold. Yes, among these 19 pieces are works that maybe don’t shine with quite the same brightness, but they too offer their luster. The stars shine less brightly than the moon; the moon in turn less brightly than the sun – are any of them any less captivating because of a disparity of lumens? ... so packed with impact that choosing a favorite feels like a fool’s errand. They’re all so goddamned GOOD, you know? Every piece is charged with intelligence and wit. And they all have something to say, which is another indicator of literary excellence that is all too rare these days ... That sense of intellectual challenge is buoyed by preternatural prose gifts, resulting in stories that dig into your brain and set up shop, burrowing beneath the surface only to pop up to offer even more unanticipated insights ... astonishing. Anyone who has ever read a word written by Zadie Smith knows what a talent she is, but when you sit down and pore through this collection, filled with weird tales and autofictional intimacies and experimental explorations, you’re confronted with the sheer magnitude of her abilities ... a masterful collection from an exquisite storyteller. Few writers have the talent to pull something like this off. Fewer still have the audacity to even try. How lucky we are, then, that Zadie Smith has both.
There’s no right way to write short fiction, but Smith does take a few superfluous risks — hefty exposition dumps, unusually brief point of view shifts, overbearingly colloquial dialogue, and meta-commentary on the craft of fiction writing — that are either the calculated moves of an iconoclast or the unchecked flourishes of a literary celebrity. The trickiest part for the reader is deciding whether such instances are tedious or lovely. Standardization, after all, can diminish creativity and experimentation, but a proclivity for breaking the rules without reason can be just as wearisome ... Like the parents toiling over their kid’s homework, some of these stories may have also gone over my head ... Smith has a knack for ending stories on unexpected, pleasing notes, even if things occasionally get muddled en route. Smith’s short fiction aims at everyone, but its undercurrents often require the fleeting type of literary elitism that makes one wonder is this confusing or am I reading it wrong?
... eclectic ... Inevitably, some are stronger than others ... Pieces that garnered a lot of attention when they first appeared elsewhere hold up gratifyingly well, though the experimental efforts that work best tend to be the ones that wear their humanity on their sleeve ... There’s some cognitive whiplash, too, in toggling so quickly between so many styles. But taken all together, the book does feel like a kind of grand union: the lucky synthesis of everything swirling inside Smith’s big, beautiful brain.
... another slam dunk ... this is a book of and for the times, sobering in its clarity but bracingly witty and clever ... Smith has her finger on the pulse of life and the utter weirdness of whatever has just become normal ... Why has she waited all this time to write short? It’s the perfect form for someone with so many ideas and a playful streak: even at her most meta-fictional she can keep a light hand ... People half-complain about Smith having become an American from living in New York but what they’re probably clocking is her very un-English voraciousness ... And inside each of her crafty fictions, you always find what seem like real people, behaving with startling individuality and naturalness.
... a catch-all volume, zippy and various ... a fun party ... Smith, as always, nails the pitch and tone of everyday life. Just as we readers are floating along frictionless in Smith’s prose, she brings us back to the real world ... Smith herself brims with zest and attitude. Her sense of inhabiting a time and place — fully being there — is a marvel ... Whether she’s recording a mass cry of distress at the closing of Cage Loup in the Village or taking us on a walk with her Jamaican aunts, whose visit coincides exactly with the four days of the Kavanaugh hearings, Smith tunes in to big, colorful worlds. She will always be a native of Willesden, another big, colorful world, but she’s made herself at home also here in the States ... In all the outposts of Zadie Smith’s imagination, one thing is certain: No one fails to be.
Nothing so obvious as a single subject or theme links the 19 stories in Smith’s first collection of short fiction, Grand Union. Nothing beyond a virtuosity for the form, a powerful imagination, and, as in her five novels and two essay collections, a striking empathy for her characters. But the best stories contained here, the stories that will whiplash readers into cycles of heartbreak, hope, and more heartbreak are those...that illustrate the intrusions, whether grand or diminutive, that disrupt the days, the family circles, the very unions we all hold dear.
... cunning and mordant ... Smith, an empathic and sardonic global writer, inhabits the psyches of radically different characters in varied settings as she orchestrates stealthily cutting dramas of generational and societal power struggles complicated by gender and race ... Adept at sudden psychological pivots ... Fury, heartbreak, and drollery collide in masterfully crafted prose that ranges in effect from the exquisitely tragic lyricism of Katherine Mansfield to the precisely calibrated acid bath of Jamaica Kincaid as Smith demonstrates her unique prowess for elegant disquiet.
...yet another kaleidoscopic display of her singular sophistication ... Smith’s compositions—rife with ambivalence, in love with ideas, witty and mordant—echo in the head long after the last word ... As a whole, Grand Union stands as a glittering affirmation of Smith’s virtuosity and range. And because she is such a generous and penetrating observer of the world, one keeps turning the pages and exclaiming with recognition.
...a pithy collection of stories that showcases her many strengths. The best of these are tightly coiled, multilayered, rich in description and tangentially topical ... Other works...have a greater investment in hazy philosophizing, in humor and in observation, and while readers will enjoy them, there is an occasionally perfunctory feel, even if the work is satirical ... Smith’s best characters...are starkly, brilliantly individuated, and to watch them encounter one another is to be held rapt ... Smith is exceptionally skilled at depicting the way people see one another, and frequently misunderstand what they see.
... not a quick-fix stopgap to tide over readers holding out for something more substantial; instead it is a set of sharp, savvy tales which juggles genres, brims with vitality and lays bare hearts and minds ... Eight of the book’s nineteen stories first appeared in Granta, the New Yorker and the Paris Review. However, these tales are not necessarily the strongest ... Not every story packs a punch. In some shorter pieces Smith experiments with form and tries out new styles. Although it is right that she should flex her creative muscles and take risks outside her comfort zone, it proves more rewarding when she plays to her strengths and returns to more naturalistic tale-telling with fleshed-out characters, believable scenarios and voices which ring true ... [Smith] does what all good writers should do: leaves her reader wanting more.
There’s no mistaking the voice, with its mix of assurance and conditionality ... there’s something looser about [Smith's] stories, more offhand ... this work comes off as incidental in the best sense — not marginal but open, as if it didn’t have to bear the weight of the novel or the essay but could operate instead out of a more spontaneous give and take. Such a quality of serendipity, of a writer making it up as she goes along, sits at the center of Grand Union, which is perhaps most vivid in its sense of play ... Such public, or political, concerns echo throughout Grand Union, which does not shy away from stories with a point ... As in her novels and essays, Smith writes about characters on terms that blend the personal with the impositions of a broader world ... Smith deftly interposes contemporary touches ... Throughout the collection, we see Smith stretching, trying one thing before turning to another ... Here we see Smith is at her finest, when she reveals what we recognize but do not say. The strength of Grand Union is the way such a sensibility informs these incidental pieces. This is the frisson that drives her writing, the balance between humor and self-laceration that cannot help but extend to us as well.
... an enchanting collection that examines the complexity of contemporary life. This book of short stories, the author’s first, refuses to define itself as any one thing. Instead, Smith allows each story to take on a tone, genre and life of its own ... The stories can be heavy, yet they also take on a tone of slight whimsy that makes them feel both real and fantastical all at once, the same way that these days, reality so often feels ... Throughout the book, there are moments when Smith seems to be talking directly to the readers, letting them know, for example, when she is using devices like metaphor or dramatic irony. While for some writers this tactic could risk a jarring effect, in Smith’s hands it feels appropriately playful and seems to create more intimacy between her and the readers. It’s as if she is reminding readers that she knows they are there, that the book is a conversation, that amid all of the real chaos and struggle that her stories reference, we’re in this together ... At times, this wild ride that Smith takes readers on is a delight to experience. Her characters are vivid and unique, as are her observations about the state of the world. At other times, the stories can get complex, and it’s not always easy to grasp their meaning. Still, it’s well worth spending time with Smith, examining and dissecting the way things are, the way things were and the way things could become.
...it mostly succeeds…though not without some missteps ... As is to be expected from a collection of length, some stories work better than others ... Fans of Smith’s work will appreciate her immense talent as a writer, but newbies are better off starting with one of her novels (specifically On Beauty or White Teeth), which are more consistently thrilling than these bits of hit-or-miss ephemera.
... strikingly varied, with abrupt shifts in tone, voice and genre. Dystopian near-futures jostle with coolly ironic meta-fictions; playful extended metaphors sit alongside novelistic slices of vivid interior life ... inevitably, necessarily – the internet’s influence on our language, on our psyches, on our culture makes its way into most stories ... Not all Smith’s attempts to capture the present moment are successful ... Smith is at her best in a number of evocative, propulsive stories that spend time with compellingly flawed characters ... In her NYRB piece, Smith writes that she reads fiction for the kind of work 'that makes me feel – against all empirical evidence to the contrary – that what I am reading is, fictionally speaking, true.' In the best stories in Grand Union, she pulls off this trick with grace and charm.
There are several ways of looking at a story collection as wide-ranging and variable as Grand Union, Zadie Smith's first book of short fiction. You could say it shows off her range — realist, dystopian, post-apocalyptic, quasi sci-fi, political and social satire, historical — and in doing so, provides something for everyone. You could say it sheds light on her longform work — novels that include White Teeth,NW, and Swing Time — and that it animates ideas she explores in her essays, most recently collected in Feel Free. Or you could say it feels like an uneven grab bag of picked-up pieces and experiments — some of which, from an unknown or less-celebrated writer, might have stayed in a drawer. What you couldn't say — what I can't say — is that it's the sort of carefully curated or tightly integrated sequence of stories that holds you rapt throughout ... Some of the slighter stories in Grand Union...feel not so much like footnotes as literary doodles, possible material for a future novel. But there are also reminders of what Smith is capable of at her best...
There is no moment in Grand Union when we are not entertained, or doubt that we are in the company of one of our best contemporary writers. The only real regrets come when Smith herself seems to doubt – or perhaps is overwhelmed by the many claims made on her identity ... The moments when Smith leans in authorially to tell us something have grace. The irruptions of metafiction, by contrast, are baffling ... It’s frustrating because an unconstrained Smith in full flight across the page is such a magnificent sight.
Zadie Smith’s first collection of short stories shows that she can pack all the astute social commentary of her novels just as deftly into the short form ... Smith explores racism, sexism and class with a light touch ... Across 19 stories, set between Smith’s two hometowns of London and New York, women take centre stage. Men are always leaving them to raise children alone, or obstructing their potential when they stay ... Politics, too, comes under Smith’s blistering gaze ... Some stories are just a few pages, and several...are wildly experimental. Multiple points of view, sometimes, leave characters flailing about in search of a plot. But even when Smith doesn’t quite succeed, her efforts to push the boundaries are tremendous ... This bold and tender book leaves us with the feeling that Smith, like her characters, is still searching for her own identity.
... vividly showcases [Smith's] fluent imagination, exploring the realm from traditional narrative to metaphorical exposition, from fiction to nonfiction ... When she’s at her best, Smith can subsume the reader into her worlds from the outset. You almost feel as if you’re reading a novel, only to be shocked — and occasionally disappointed — when a story is over too quickly ... The previously published stories are generally lengthier and feel more developed. They are often splendidly good.
... particularly bewildering. There are several masterpieces among its 19 entries — but there are also experimental doodles and duds that might better have been left in [Smith's] desk drawer ... Smith always hints more than she spells out, and where race is concerned, she’ll deliberately delay revealing ethnic identities until you’re well into the story. Identity politics interest her far less than people do. It’s no surprise that she does better with a bigger canvas – 20 or 30 pages versus 4 to 10 – given the rich, symphonic scope of her novels ... At times Smith is so cleverly oblique that she’s seems to skirt taking on any subject matter at all ... isn’t a good place to start with Smith if you aren’t familiar with her.
Acclaimed author Zadie Smith’s Grand Union is an enchanting collection that examines the complexity of contemporary life. This book of short stories, the author’s first, refuses to define itself as any one thing. Instead, Smith allows each story to take on a tone, genre and life of its own ... The stories can be heavy, yet they also take on a tone of slight whimsy that makes them feel both real and fantastical all at once, the same way that these days, reality so often feels ... At times, this wild ride that Smith takes readers on is a delight to experience. Her characters are vivid and unique, as are her observations about the state of the world. At other times, the stories can get complex, and it’s not always easy to grasp their meaning. Still, it’s well worth spending time with Smith, examining and dissecting the way things are, the way things were and the way things could become.
There’s a lot of breathless trying on in Zadie Smith’s first collection of short stories – as if she’s late to a fancy dress party but still can’t decide what costume to wear. Or whether to go in fancy dress at all. Or maybe go to the cinema instead? ... The writing in Grand Union is most alive when Smith is channelling versions of herself ... The inconsistency of quality is a more serious flaw. At least eight of the 19 stories in Grand Union aren’t very good. Two dystopian efforts, 'Meet the President!' and 'Escape from New York' are cute ideas but on the page, both dawdle along. Her more conventional, naturalistic pieces are mannered and self-conscious; she struggles to locate the drama or interest ... The best stories here are those that act as commentary on her fluctuations and doubts, that blend her criticism with the energy and verve of her fiction. Smith has always been a bit of a smartarse and when she owns that smart-arsery, she’s not only incredibly funny but full of heart, wisdom and truth.
The diverse fusillade that constitutes early 21st-century life is memorably dramatized in Grand Union, Zadie Smith’s first collection of short stories. But “stories” is too simple a term for these pieces. Just as life presents a range of challenges, Ms. Smith presents a range of narrative styles, from traditional to experimental, and addresses such issues as racism, sexism and the current state of politics, especially the ongoing mud fight known as Brexit ... If these works have a common theme, it’s power and its many forms and abuses ... The strongest pieces, not surprisingly, focus on race ... Ms. Smith’s erudition in Grand Union is as riveting as it was in last year’s brilliant essay collection Feel Free. In the hands of a master, a diverse fusillade of thought-provoking stories is hardly a distraction.
... beneath [Olive's] hard carapace – and this is where part of Strout’s genius lies – is compassion, empathy and vulnerability, as Olive starts to feel aware of her own mortality ... a tour de force. With extraordinary economy of prose – few writers can pack so much emotion, so much detail into a single paragraph – Strout immerses us in the lives of her characters, each so authentically drawn as to be deserving of an entire novel themselves. Compassionate, masterly and profound, this is a writer at the height of her powers.
Grand Union doesn’t quite have the flavour of a mid-career retrospective, though Smith’s many strengths are everywhere visible in it. It’s more like the boîtes-en-valise Marcel Duchamp used to make – little leather cases containing miniature copies of his best-known works – or an even more venerable prototype, the Kunstkammern of Renaissance Europe, micro-collections that purportedly bundled up all the wonders of creation in one exquisite cabinet, but always ultimately functioned as portraits of their patrons ... So if you’ve read any of Smith’s longer fiction, or any of her writing really, you’ll be hard put to see the present anthology as any sort of interlude or episode within the larger corpus; rather, it serves as a figure for the whole ... some tremendous comic writing and snappy dialogue, and a range of themes and devices with which you may already be familiar ... a few determinedly artless forays into genre ... there’s at times a slight sense of distorted perspectives, of over-concentration, as if Smith had passed her material through the alembic once too often in an effort to fit it into the bottle ... Last lines are often bathetic to the point of tweeness ... The level of originality and observation seems to me much higher in the UK-based stories than in those set in America, where the mythopoeic force of cinema and television is stronger.
The stories in Grand Union occupy a range of registers. 'Big Week', a poignant story about a disgraced ex-policeman whose wife leaves him, has a quiet pathos reminiscent of Raymond Carver. By contrast, 'Escape from New York' is almost pantomimic in its playfulness ... The collection is patchy; some of the stories are blandly middlebrow and the prose is stylistically clunky at times.
... a soup of contradictions served up with flair. She experiments with form, with language, with conjecture, with the absurd. Tidbits of autofiction, and dashes of speculative fiction are mixed together and seasoned with current events ... Smith is witty and eviscerating ... some of these new stories do feel hysterical. They’re panicked — about time, about motherhood, about the environment. The short story as a form is new for Smith, and some of these stories feel unfinished ... Many of the best stories are toward the back of the collection. I found myself wanting to rearrange their order so that the final story, Grand Union, was the first.
Reading Zadie Smith’s latest short-story collection is like listening to hour upon hour of tales about someone else’s dreams. The stories are well written because Smith is a terrific writer. The characters are well drawn because that is Smith’s forte. Much of it is striking and much of it is memorable. And yet the stories are frustratingly fragmented and incoherent — strange and impenetrable as the subconscious itself ... My main gripe is that the stories are more or less meaningless. Page after page, we await the moment when Smith will tell us what — beyond the immediate — they’re about...But she never does ... There is no denying that Smith’s prose style is glorious. She is rather like a person striking matches in a cave: The reader sees, if only for a split second, flashing images in the darkness. Egyptian hieroglyphs. Dancing bears. A couple making love ... About the lovemaking — the sex scenes in Grand Union are grossly overwritten. Pointlessly shocking and shockingly pointless. It oughtn’t to be thought prudish to complain about this. Smith is a writer who is capable of so much more than cheap Hollywood tricks. And gratuitous lingering on bodily fluids, etc. feels like something designed to divert and distract us from . . . well, quite. What are these stories about? ... The most redeeming features of Grand Union are the well-sketched characters and how they interact ... if Grand Union falls short, it is only because she has so far to fall. Smith scatters literary brilliance to the winds, forcing the reader to go to the enormous effort of piecing it all together. It’s a big ask. To be honest, I read Grand Union cover to cover only because I was writing about it. Fully awake and autonomous, I’d probably close it at page 20, let out a yawn, and lay my head down to enjoy the sort of dreams that we all find more interesting: our own.
Grand Union contains a number of smart, witty, insightful and cultured short stories by UK-based author Zadie Smith. Perhaps half or more are based in America, in particular New York City. the remainder were written for a UK audience and use slang and brand names that may be unfamiliar to an American audience. Many of the stories are fragments, and as fragments are mostly character sketches. Many of the stories also feel as if they are experiments, while others have potential for becoming a chapter within a larger work.
Zadie Smith contains multitudes — fully formed, distinct, unique — and she shares them to devastating effect in the 19 short stories that make up Grand Union, her first collection. These stories are all over the map, but in the very best sense: in geography and time, in form and voice, in tone and approach. They demand that you pay attention, and it’s best to meet each one on its own terms, without preconceived notions of what may be lurking there. And though all our contemporary anxieties and dread skulk inside or punch through these stories...they hold a timeless quality since, of course, people are people, and the range of human emotion remains steady no matter where, when, or in whom it exhibits itself. Such is Smith’s wizardry, to give those emotions such range of voice ... This whipsawing of the stories through time, place, people, and points of view leaves the reader with a buzz of disorientation, which does nothing to dampen the desire to find out what comes next.
The selection here is uneven, and the skill Smith demonstrates in the strongest stories sets off the unfinished feel of several of the autofictional pieces. She is at her brilliant best when channeling voices and conjuring settings ... The caliber of these pieces varies, but Smith’s keen intellect shines through them all. Both her fans and readers who enjoy smart fiction with an up-to-the-minute sensibility, will find much to like.
Reading her is like hanging out with the cool kids. ... There is historical fiction, magical realism, dystopian/speculative fiction and autofiction; there are political fables, humor pieces and stories that fall into none of these categories ... Smith’s tragedies are balanced by her comedies, among which 'Escape From New York' is foremost ... I could go on, but I’d rather you just read the book.
In Smith’s collection of 19 short stories...it’s equally exciting and tiring for us to see [her] process play out, to read her greedy attempts at every other genre — autofiction, dystopian fiction, speculative fiction, fiction that resists being boxed into neat categories. Smith is like the narrator in ‘Downtown’ who says, 'I tried on four different outfits and then just went ahead and wore them all'. As a result, the collection is not an easy read, but Smith doesn’t intend it to be breezy either ... Grand Union is an eclectic but largely tepid collection. There are many pages of brilliance, of course, given Smith’s wry humour, keen observations, and beautiful writing ... But in other places, narratives dawdle; some seem unfinished — ‘Mood’ reads like the diary entries of a precocious young adult; and some require re-re-reading. I wanted to take some of the stories away from the collection and keep them aside for a separate book, or at least reshuffle them according to the level of risk that Smith has taken with form. Grand Union is in fact a Grand Experiment, in which Smith often abandons plot in favour of the articulation of ideas and anxieties. It no doubt demonstrates her versatility as a writer, but leaves you to fill in the gaps, interpret endlessly, engage with the broken, the shard, and discover new meanings with every read.
By its very definition, a collection of stories will offer variety, but Smith takes this promise to a new level. The 19 tales of Grand Union make up a remarkably diverse collection. Written in a range of styles, her stories capture the complexities of contemporary life through multifarious voices. It’s all here – explorations of race and class, gender roles and generational differences, and a myriad of political debates ... When finishing one story and turning the page to start another, the reader is never sure what will come next. Still, Smith brings her powers of description and her astute observations to each entry, skillfully modifying the language and syntax to match the perspective. The talent that has attracted her loyal following is on full display ... It goes without saying that not every story will appeal to every reader. Smith’s candor is unapologetic. Her descriptions can be explicit in ways that some readers might find offensive. Her choices in this area are not gratuitous, but she does include depictions of some of the harsher aspects of the world, and she does so unflinchingly ... Thisbeing said, when a reader finds the stories that resonate...Smith’s stories seem golden.
In Smith’s smart and bewitching story collection, the novelist’s first...the modern world is refracted in ways that are both playful and rigorous, formally experimental and socially aware ... Smith exercises her range without losing her wry, slightly cynical humor. Readers of all tastes will find something memorable in this collection.
Nineteen erudite stories wheel through a constellation of topics, tones, and fonts to dizzying literary effect ... Wit marbles Smith’s fiction, especially the jaunty 'Escape From New York,' which riffs on the urban legend that Michael Jackson...ferried Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando in a rental car out of the smoking debris of 9/11 ... Much less successful are 'Downtown' and 'Parents’ Morning Epiphany,' which read like fragments trying to become essays. Still, Smith begins and ends with two arresting mother-daughter tales—the first nestled in alienation, the last, 'Grand Union,' in communion with the dead. Several of Smith's stories are on their ways to becoming classics.
