Grand Union: Stories

by Zadie Smith

Overview

Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal! 

A dazzling collection of short fiction

Zadie Smith has established herself as one of the most iconic, critically respected, and popular writers of her generation. In her first short story collection, she combines her power of observation and her inimitable voice to mine the fraught and complex experience of life in the modern world. Interleaving eleven completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from The New Yorker and elsewhere, Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction. Moving exhilaratingly across genres and perspectives, from the historic to the vividly current to the slyly dystopian, Grand Union is a sharply alert and prescient collection about time and place, identity and rebirth, the persistent legacies that haunt our present selves and the uncanny futures that rush up to meet us.

Nothing is off limits, and everything—when captured by Smith’s brilliant gaze—feels fresh and relevant. Perfectly paced and utterly original, Grand Union highlights the wonders Zadie Smith can do.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525559016
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	453,981
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW, and Swing Time, as well as two collections of essays, Changing My Mind and Feel Free. Zadie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002, and was listed as one of Granta's 20 Best Young British Novelists in 2003 and again in 2013. White Teeth won multiple literary awards including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian First Book Award. On Beauty was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and NW was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. Zadie Smith is currently a tenured professor of fiction at New York University and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Hometown:

London, England

Date of Birth:

October 27, 1975

Place of Birth:

Willesden, London, England

Education:

B.A. in English, King's College at Cambridge University, 1998

Read an Excerpt

The Dialectic

"I would like to be on good terms with all animals," remarked the woman, to her daughter. They were sitting on the gritty beach at Sopot, looking out at the cold sea. The eldest boy had gone to the arcade. The twins were in the water.

"But you are not!" cried the daughter. "You are not at all!"

It was true. What the woman had said was true, in intention, but what the girl had said was true, too, in reality. The woman, though she generally refrained from beef, pork, and lamb, ate-with great relish-many other kinds of animals and fish, and put out flypaper in the summer in the stuffy kitchen of their small city apartment and had once (though her daughter did not know this) kicked the family dog. The woman had been pregnant with her fourth child, at the time, and temperamental. The dog seemed to her, at that moment, to be one responsibility too many.

"I did not say that I am. I said that I should like to be."

The daughter let out a cruel laugh.

"Words are cheap," she said.

Indeed, at that moment the woman held a half-eaten chicken wing in her hand, elevated oddly to keep it from being covered in sand, and it was the visible shape of the bones in the chicken wing, and the tortured look of the thin, barbecued skin stretched across those bones, which had brought the subject to mind.

"I dislike this place," said the daughter, definitively. She was glaring at the lifeguard, who had once again had to wade into the murk to tell the only bathers-the girl's own brothers-not to go past the red buoy. They weren't swimming-they could not swim. There were no waters in the city in which to take lessons, and the seven days they spent in Sopot each year was not long enough to learn. No, they were leaping into the waves, and being knocked over by them, as unsteady on their feet as newborn calves, their chests gray with that strange silt which fringed the beach, like a great smudge God had drawn round the place with a dirty thumb.

"It makes no sense," continued the daughter, "to build a resort town around such a filthy and unwelcoming sea."

Her mother held her tongue. She had come to Sopot with her own mother and her mother had come with her mother before that. For at least two hundred years people had come here to escape the cities and let their children run wild in the public squares. The silt was of course not filth, it was natural, though no one had ever told the woman exactly what form of natural substance it was. She only knew to be sure to wash out all their costumes nightly in the hotel sink.

Once, the woman's daughter had enjoyed the Sopot sea and everything else. The candyfloss and the shiny, battery-operated imitation cars-Ferraris and Mercedes-that you could drive willy-nilly through the streets. She had, like all children who come to Sopot, enjoyed counting her steps as she walked out over the ocean, along the famous wooden boardwalk. In the woman's view, the best thing about a resort town such as this was that you did whatever everybody else did, without thinking, moving like a pack. For a fatherless family, as theirs now was, this collective aspect was the perfect camouflage. There were no individual people here. In town, the woman was on the contrary an individual, a particularly unfortunate sort of individual, saddled with four fatherless children. Here she was only another mother buying candyfloss for her family. Her children were like all children, their faces obscured by huge clouds of pink spun sugar. Except this year, as far as her daughter was concerned, the camouflage was of no use. For she was on the very cusp of being a woman herself, and if she got into one of those ludicrous toy cars her knees would touch her chin. She had decided instead to be disgusted with everything in Sopot and her mother and the world.

"It's an aspiration," said her mother, quietly. "I would like to look into the eye of an animal, of any animal, and be able to feel no guilt whatsoever."

"Well, then it has nothing to do with the animal itself," said the girl pertly, unwrapping her towel finally and revealing her precious, adolescent body to the sun and the gawkers she now believed were lurking everywhere, behind every corner. "It's just about you, as usual. Black again! Mama, costumes come in different colors, you know. You turn everything into a funeral."

The little paper boat that had held the barbecue chicken must have blown away. It seemed that no matter how warm Sopot became there would always be that northeasterly wind, the waves would be whipped up into "white horses" and the lifeguard's sign would go up and there would never be a safe time to swim. It was hard to make life go the way you wanted. Now she waved to her boys as they waved at her. But they had only waved to get their mother's attention, so that now she would see them as they curled their tongues under their bottom lips and tucked their hands into their armpits and fell about laughing when another great wave knocked them over. Their father, who could very easily be-as far as anyone in Sopot was concerned-around the next corner, buying more refreshments for his family, had in reality emigrated, to America, and now fixed car doors onto cars in some gigantic factory, instead of being the co-manager of a small garage, as he had once had the good fortune to be, before he left.

She did not badmouth him or curse his stupidity to her children. In this sense, she could not be blamed for either her daughter's sourness or her sons' immaturity and recklessness. But privately she hoped and imagined that his days were brutal and dark and that he lived in that special kind of poverty she had heard American cities can provide. As her daughter applied what looked like cooking oil to the taut skin of her tummy, the woman discreetly placed her chicken wing in the sand before quickly, furtively, kicking more sand over it, as if it were a turd she wished buried. And the little chicks, hundreds of thousands of them, perhaps millions, pass down an assembly line, every day of the week, and chicken sexers turn them over, and sweep all the males into huge grinding vats where they are minced alive.

Editorial Reviews

Zadie Smith is fearless. Her first short story collection, ‘Grand Union,’ is a soup of contradictions served up with flair. She experiments with form, with language, with conjecture, with the absurd. Tidbits of autofiction, and dashes of speculative fiction are mixed together and seasoned with current events… This is Smith at her best, integrating a compelling story line with perceptiveness and social commentary.” — The Washington Post
 
“‘Grand Union’ is an unusual creature, combining all the experimental exuberance of a writer discovering a form with the technical prowess of one at the height of her abilities. The result is exhilarating. Between the covers of one book, readers will find such disparate forms as allegory, parable, speculative thriller and satire, as well as shorter incarnations of Smith’s characteristic social comedy…Smith’s voracious intellect is on full display. With vitality and wit, she shuttles between the philosophical universal and the intensely local — a movement formally realized in stories like ‘Two Men Arrive in a Village’ — between the world and the self…It is a delight to watch Smith play.” —San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Thrillingly, the best work in ‘Grand Union’ is some of the newest. Among its previously unpublished stories and the two most recently published ones, we find the surreal, the nonlinear, the essayistic, the pointillist…Several stories take a mosaic approach, juxtaposing disparate scenes — in one case, venues around New York City involving music — into a brilliant whole. The effect, appropriately, is rather like instrumental improvisation…[‘Grand Union’] contains some of Smith’s most vibrant, original fiction, the kind of writing she’ll surely be known for. Some of these stories provide hints that everything we’ve seen from her so far will one day be considered her ‘early work,’ that what lies ahead is less charted territory, wilder and less predictable.”—Rebecca Makkai, The New York Times Book Review
 
“There’s no mistaking the voice, with its mix of assurance and conditionality…Here we see Smith is at her finest, when she reveals what we recognize but do not say. The strength of ‘Grand Union’ is the way such a sensibility informs these incidental pieces. This is the frisson that drives her writing, the balance between humor and self-laceration that cannot help but extend to us as well.” —David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times

“Delightful…the tales will stay with you long after you’ve closed the book.” —Vogue.com

“An enchanting collection that examines the complexity of contemporary life. This book of short stories, the author’s first, refuses to define itself as any one thing.  Instead, Smith allows each story to take on a tone, genre and life of its own…This wild ride that Smith takes readers on is a delight to experience. Her characters are vivid and unique, as are her observations about the state of the world.”—Associated Press
 
“A varied and modern collection, suffused with Smith’s powers of observation and literary prowess.”—USA Today, 5 Books Not to Miss
 
“Nothing so obvious as a single subject or theme links the 19 stories in Smith’s first collection of short fiction, Grand Union. Nothing beyond a virtuosity for the form, a powerful imagination, and, as in her five novels and two essay collections, a striking empathy for her characters. But the best stories contained here, the stories that will whiplash readers into cycles of heartbreak, hope, and more heartbreak are those, like ‘Two Men,’ that illustrate the intrusions, whether grand or diminutive, that disrupt the days, the family circles, the very unions we all hold dear.”—The A.V. Club
 
“Just as Feel Free, her NBCC-winning collection of nonfiction last year, made it clear that Zadie Smith is our best living critic, Grand Union will make it apparent she’s also one of our finest short story writers, too. Assembling tales from the past two decades with ten brand new ones, Grand Union showcases a huge range of effects, from lyric elegy to high satire and even farce. The compression and swiftness of these tales are opposite skills to the ones Smith has plied in her five, wondrously different novels. Yet to watch these tales unfold is to feel a gladness that only virtuosity—and emotional depth—can ignite.”—John Freeman, Literary Hub

“[Smith’s] first-ever story collection, Grand Union, offers yet another kaleidoscopic display of her singular sophistication. In these stories (more than half of them previously unpublished), Smith’s compositions—rife with ambivalence, in love with ideas, witty and mordant—echo in the head long after the last word…As a whole, Grand Union stands as a glittering affirmation of Smith’s virtuosity and range.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“A pithy collection of stories that showcases [Smith’s] many strengths. The best of these are tightly coiled, multilayered, rich in description and tangentially topical… [Her best characters] are starkly, brilliantly individuated, and to watch them encounter one another is to be held rapt…Smith is exceptionally skilled at depicting the way people see one another, and frequently misunderstand what they see.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“A virtuoso performance.” –BBC.com

“[The stories] ricochet between, among other settings, 1950s London and modern-day Manhattan. But each demonstrates that Smith continues to be among the most observant voices working today.” —Elle

“It feels fitting…that [Smith’s] first short-story collection is as eclectic as it is…Taken all together, the book does feel like a kind of grand union: the lucky synthesis of everything swirling inside Smith’s big, beautiful brain.” —Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

“These masterful tales impress, engage and occasion¬ally infuriate as Smith brings her dazzling wit and acute sensitivity to bear… All genres are Smith’s to play with.” —BookPage (starred review) 

 “Fury, heartbreak, and drollery collide in masterfully crafted prose that ranges in effect from the exquisitely tragic lyricism of Katherine Mansfield to the precisely calibrated acid bath of Jamaica Kincaid as Smith demonstrates her unique prowess for elegant disquiet.” —Booklist (starred review)

“A gorgeous mix of genres and perspectives.” —New York Post, The Fall Books Everyone is Talking About

“All provocative, incisive, and revealing Smith's prodigious talent, which she refuses to limit to any singular genre or subject, instead choosing to range from dystopia to realism, offering sly commentary on the lives we live today, and what might be in store for our futures.” —NYLON, The 34 Books You'll Want To Read This Fall
 
“Grand Union applies [Smith’s] sharp skills of observation and her playful wit…The virtuoso Smith doesn’t stick to one genre. Dystopia and horror sit adjacent to historical fiction in this energetic collection. Her fans will appreciate her rigorous engagement with identity, class, family and place.”—New York Observer, The Must-Read New Books of Fall

“Nineteen erudite stories wheel through a constellation of topics, tones, and fonts to dizzying literary effect…Wit marbles Smith’s fiction…Several of Smith’s stories are on their ways to becoming classics.” —Kirkus (starred review)

“Smart and bewitching…The modern world is refracted in ways that are both playful and rigorous, formally experimental and socially aware…Smith exercises her range without losing her wry, slightly cynical humor. Readers of all tastes will find something memorable in this collection.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

From the Publisher

Zadie Smith, who narrates the first and last of the 19 stories in her collection, vividly explores people’s complex lives. This audiobook includes published pieces from THE NEW YORKER as well as new works. Smith’s low pitch and English accent make this work sound calm and literary—as if she is narrating to a familiar audience. Doc Brown’s narration of the other 17 stories is an entertaining ebb and flow of energy. He employs different accents and plays with pitch. There is a soulful moment when he transitions into singing and then naturally falls back into his speaking voice. He is musical and colloquial in specific stories like “Big Week” and “Meet the President.” Brown’s enjoyable narration adds to Smith’s well-established reputation as a writer. T.E.C. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2019 - AudioFile

Zadie Smith, who narrates the first and last of the 19 stories in her collection, vividly explores people’s complex lives. This audiobook includes published pieces from THE NEW YORKER as well as new works. Smith’s low pitch and English accent make this work sound calm and literary—as if she is narrating to a familiar audience. Doc Brown’s narration of the other 17 stories is an entertaining ebb and flow of energy. He employs different accents and plays with pitch. There is a soulful moment when he transitions into singing and then naturally falls back into his speaking voice. He is musical and colloquial in specific stories like “Big Week” and “Meet the President.” Brown’s enjoyable narration adds to Smith’s well-established reputation as a writer. T.E.C. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

OCTOBER 2019 - AudioFile