59 pages • 1 hour read
Zadie SmithA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The first-person narrator is the protagonist of the novel. She remains unnamed, emphasizing her anxiety about her identity. The narrator grows up in project housing in London with a white father and a Black mother, which complicates her sense of self. The narrator is passionate about movie musicals, inspired by great Black dancers who make manipulation of the body look easy. Her passion for dance helps the narrator escape her present and transcend her complicated relationship with her body.
The narrator is characterized through her relationships with other women, whom she envies, projects her insecurities onto, and carefully studies to understand aspects of femininity. The narrator’s mother, childhood best friend Tracey, and employer Aimee are all strong-willed, fiercely independent women, in contrast to the narrator, who struggles to feel empowered and develop goals and ambitions for herself. Tracey becomes such an aspirational ideal that the narrator has trouble seeing through her invented glamour. Her accomplished and successful mother makes the narrator feel guilty about her lack of direction or ambition. Aimee’s privileged and easy path through the world becomes a crutch, as the narrator forgoes having her own life to work as Aimee’s personal assistant.
By Zadie Smith
African History
View Collection
Art
View Collection
Beauty
View Collection
Books About Art
View Collection
Books that Feature the Theme of...
View Collection
British Literature
View Collection
Childhood & Youth
View Collection
Colonialism & Postcolonialism
View Collection
Coming-of-Age Journeys
View Collection
Contemporary Books on Social Justice
View Collection
European History
View Collection
Loyalty & Betrayal
View Collection
Mothers
View Collection
National Book Critics Circle Award...
View Collection
Pride & Shame
View Collection
The Best of "Best Book" Lists
View Collection
The Booker Prizes Awardees & Honorees
View Collection