A review by jendella
The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith

3.0

First of all: this book is much too long and it has a weird white-man-colonial-anthropological tone that I tried view as “ironic” but as the book went on, it became clearer to me that it wasn’t?? But yeah, if you can stick with the excessively long first third and then get past reading descriptions such as someone being “blue-black” in skin tone or having “hair like an Indian”... on a craft level, there are few that can match Zadie. I’m sorry but it’s true (in my opinion ofc). Even with all its problems (I’ve not even mentioned the Jewish thing yet) I kept reading. At first it was to see where exactly the tone/approach was going, and then because I’m just a fan of Zadie’s writing and there was enough of wit, curious characters and interesting turns to keep me involved.