Status Updates From NW

Really enjoying this so far! It’s contemporary in a way that’s not eye roll inducing, and the writing is good without the prose being too purple.

Daughter drag. Sister drag. Mother drag. Wife drag. Court drag. Rich drag. Poor drag. British drag. Jamaican drag. Each required a different wardrobe. But when considering these various attitudes she struggled to think what would be the most authentic, or perhaps the least inauthentic.

(I am on page 345 of 401. GR says this has 296 pages for some reason)

It did not strike Keisha Blake that such feelings of alienation are the banal fate of adolescents everywhere. She considered herself particularly afflicted, and it is not an exaggeration to say that she struggled to think of anyone besides perhaps James Baldwin and Jesus who had experienced the profound isolation and loneliness she now knew to be the one and only true reality of this world.

(401 pages, not 296)

Continue to be dazzled and very intrigued by the introduction of a different story from the neighborhood.

This is just mind-blowingly good so far. Smith creates an actual experience of living as a specific person in a particular place -- not a report of it, but an opportunity to walk in Lean's shoes. The craft here reminds me a bit of Lincoln in the Bardo (though this is a very different life and very different ghosts.