While many of Zadie Smith’s novels address similar themes and settings to White Teeth, her 2012 novel NW deals again with the neighborhoods of northwest London in which she grew up. Taking up a different narrative mode and coming out of a changed structure of feeling, the novel could be read against White Teeth for what has changed about Smith’s style and outlook as much as what has remained.
John Lanchester’s 2012 novel Capital offers a post-9/11 and post-2008 financial crisis view of suburban London. Yoking newly articulated tensions over multiculturalism, immigration, and class to the trauma of the 2008 financial crisis, Lanchester delivers an X-ray view of contemporary London life....
