International Sensation

Novel Dept: We cover the basics. At age 36, the writer who became an international sensation at 25 with her first novel, White Teeth , is now firmly established in the transatlantic literary pantheon with two subsequent novels, essays and reviews, all much applauded. London-born, she teaches creative writing at New York University and lives nearby with her husband and three-year-old child. Another child is coming in March. She wears a turban and jeans and large, black-framed glasses. No pictures, please, according to Globe and Mail. But Smith bristles at mention of the word gritty, as often used by reviewers to describe her home turf. It s really not gritty, she protests. It s normal life for millions of people. It s how I grew up. It s how all my friends grew up. 15 dazzling fall fiction reads Smith has come to Toronto to publicize her latest novel, NW , named for the postal district of the London neighbourhoods where she grew up and written in a bravura style that has inspired more than one reviewer to mention Joyce. It arrives here in the same season as Martin Amis s Lionel Asbo , another high-style production set in similarly overlooked neighbourhoods of the great capital, the two books seeming to combine in an aggressive repudiation of the effete Hampstead novel that dwells on the lives and loves of North London s more privileged inhabitants. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.