Expectation is a demon, and maybe it's why so many of these stories felt to me like exercises - workings-through of concepts rather than the you-know-it-when-you-see-it red meat of the real thing. Almost without exception, they're unquestionably well crafted, but somehow mostly a bit too controlled-feeling (even when they're clearly written to unravel), their high concepts too apparent even when the stories themselves are constructed to be oblique, their ending points too close to being pat even when pleasingly abrupt. That that sense of control - combined perhaps with a close attention to the world - is the closest thing to a unifying voice is a problem.
But, you know, maybe I would've responded to these differently if I'd encountered them individually - three of them, "Just Right", "Meet the President!" and "Now More Than Ever" (the latter, about cancel culture, one of the stronger ones), I had, but also already through the frame of being 'Zadie Smith stories' - and out of context, or would I even then have felt that each was in the thrall of some other writer or style, whether that being one I specifically recognised or more broadly in its nature.
I read the whole collection, and I'm not hesitant about abandoning books - maybe particularly short story collections - so that's a recommendation in itself. And there are some good ones in here - but somehow all too few that truly came to life. The ones I liked most were "The Dialectic" (but it's like a more programmatic Lydia Davis), "For the King" (this one made me think of a more warm-blooded Rachel Cusk), and two which are primarily about character and story and maybe those are ultimately Smith's strengths - "Sentimental Education" and "Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets".
