If you're gonna do it/ Do it right.

THE AUTOGRAPH MAN
ZADIE SMITH

Sure-footed, and elegantly angsted-out. Intense, but also supremely controlled. Centred around one man's quest for identity, it draws a staggeringly beautiful, and carefully structured framework that questions fame, and forgetting. Faith, and ritual. The notion of permanence, and death, death, death. Friendship, and fidelity.

Alex-Li Tandem is the confused, drugged-out/ drunk on most occasions, title character, in search of the Holy Grail of Autograph Men -- a Kitty Alexander. He's conflicted in every possible way. Of course, the external quest for the rarest of autographs parallels his internal quest, for resolution of his grief at his father's death when he was a child.

It's intelligent and intense, and somehow more accessible than her other two books. Not less literary/ deep, don't get me wrong -- at least, not much. But it just feels younger, somehow. Less 70 mm and multi-generational and allusive. But stunning still.

Aside: I promise to write longer sentences. This staccato stuff sounds like me, but makes for very bumpy reading. My apologies.