Shelf Life: Zadie Smith

Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.

This October, Zadie Smith has published her fourth essay collection, Dead and Alive, for which her aspirations are simple, straightforward, and essential: She wants the book to “create a little space for thought—my own and other people’s.” Were she to blurb her own book, she would “keep it purely factual: ‘Here are some essays written by Zadie Smith over the past decade.’”

The acclaimed author has also written six novels, which include her debut White Teeth, which was made into a miniseries; the Orange Prize-winning and Booker Prize-shortlisted On Beauty; and NW, which was adapted for the BBC. She’s also written a novella; a short story collection; and a play, The Wife of Willesden, adapted from Chaucer. The hardest part of her writing process, she says? “Overcoming a serious amount of self-disgust.”

The London-born and -based writer lived in New York for a decade, during which she taught creative writing at New York University; grew up with two brothers, including actor and comedian Doc Brown; changed her name from Sadie; once bummed a smoke from Joan Didion; contributes to the New York Review of Books and The New Yorker; is credited as a songwriter on Bleachers’ Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night; has sung backup for Jon Batiste; has been mistaken for Tracee Ellis Ross; and has two children with poet and novelist husband Nick Laird.

Likes: TV; parties; running; swimming; black-and-white musicals; hip-hop; people-watching.

Dislikes: smartphones; getting older (because she loved being young); manicures and pedicures; interviews and photo shoots; billionaires and social media; shopping.

Books have taught her “what other people are thinking” like nothing else has, and she tries to “read my youngers and betters,” she says, and “not to lend any literary clout to organizations that take oil money or fund wars.”

Take a closer look at her book recommendations below.

The book that…:

…I wish I could read again for the first time:

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. It’s a masterpiece of novelistic technique, and my first time reading it was like a new vista opening up.

…made me want to be a writer:

The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl. Dahl was a genius, and this is his masterpiece. It reads like Kafka, and it made me shake and cry, aged about 10.

…made me weep uncontrollably:

That isn’t normally my reaction to fiction, but I had it recently with Lily King’s Heart the Lover.

…shaped my worldview:

There are too many. I think The Autobiography of Malcom X had a big effect. The mixture of the personal and the political in it is so revealing. It made me realize how close the two are in people’s lives.

…made me rethink a long-held belief:

Unapologetic by Francis Spufford stopped me thinking contemptuously of the billions of people on this earth—Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, and so many others—whose lives include an element of faith.

…I’ve re-read the most:

Probably the books I used to teach. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison would be up there.

…I read in one sitting; it was that good:

It doesn’t happen any more because I have kids but, years ago, I remember reading Alex Garland’s The Beach in a single afternoon in an armchair. Another life!

…sealed a friendship:

When I first came to America, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders made me a lot of friends in the Brooklyn area.

…surprised me:

I’m constantly surprised. Brandon Taylor’s new novel Minor Black Figures surprised me in the best way, in the sense that it was even better than I thought it would be.

…I’d take on vacation:

Always a new book. Hopefully a debut, by somebody clever and interesting and/or funny. This summer it was Send Nudes by Saba Sams.

…has a sex scene that made me blush:

It takes a lot to make me blush. Hardcore and explicit scenes I’m used to, but I actually think it was Sally Rooney’s radical intimacy that made me blush most recently.

…I’d like turned into a TV show or movie:

I think all Katie Kitamura’s novels would make stylish movies. Me and my husband have written the screenplay for Brian, which is a novel by Jeremy Cooper about a man who goes to the movies every day. All we need is a director!

…should be a cult classic:

Independent People by Halldór Laxness. He won the Nobel Prize a long time ago. In Iceland it’s the canon, but to me it’s a cult classic.

…should win a major literary prize:

Flesh by David Szalay. That’s a hell of a novel, IMHO.

…gave me faith in the power of books:

I’m going to choose two: Into Their Labours by John Berger and Black and British by David Olusoga. It’s incredible that you can bring obscure lives into the light just by using words on paper.

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