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Grand Union
- Narrated by: Zadie Smith, Doc Brown
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
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Grand Union
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Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
In the summer of 1959, an Antiguan immigrant in north west London lives the last day of his life, unknowingly caught in someone else's story of hate and division, resistance and revolt.
A mother looks back on her early forays into matters of the human heart - and other parts of the human body - considering the ways in which desire is always an act of negotiation, destruction, and self-invention.
A disgraced cop stands amid the broken shards of his life, unable to move forward into a future that holds no place for him.
Moral panic spreads like contagion through the upper echelons of New York City - and the cancelled people look disconcertingly like the rest of us.
A teenage scion of the technocratic elite chases spectres through a premium virtual reality, trailed by a little girl with a runny nose and no surviving family.
We all take a much-needed break from this mess, on a package holiday where the pool's electric blue is ceaselessly replenished, while political and environmental collapse happen far away, to someone else.
Interleaving ten completely new and unpublished stories with some of her best-loved pieces from the New Yorker and elsewhere, Zadie Smith presents a dizzyingly rich and varied collection of fiction.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.
This collection is narrated by Doc Brown, with the first and last story read by Zadie Smith.
Critic reviews
"Zadie Smith is the best writer of our generation." (Gary Shteyngart)
"She's a genius.... It's bliss." (Dolly Alderton)
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What listeners say about Grand Union
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- KB
- 10-07-20
Warm and wise.
Just when you start to think you may be getting to grips with the current state of the world, Zadie Smith comes along to remind you that really you don’t have a clue about anything at all. Every time I finish one of her books, I feel like I’ve blown off the cobwebs of some forgotten, unused part of my brain. These stories are no exception. They’re sharp, and of course funny, but also tender, warm and wise. She manages to tap into everyday, existential anxieties without making the reader well, anxious. Zadie reads the first and last stories then her brother, Doc Brown reads the rest, and does a good job.
My favourite is The Lazy River. I actually listened to Zadie herself read that for The New York Times The Writers Voice and it was utterly sublime.
I plan on buying the hardback and reading it for myself, would definitely recommend.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Rob
- 15-10-19
Zadie Smith reads only the first and last chapters
The other 17 chapters (most of the book) are read by Doc Brown (brother of ZS), who does a good job.. but if you download this audiobook because you enjoy listening to a writer read their own work - you will be disappointed. They’ve chosen to use ZS as the sample, but it isn’t representative of the audiobook.
EDIT: Doc Brown actually does a great job. I've increased the performance review to reflect this.
That aside...
This is an eclectic collection of existential short stories. Each with a vicious sting in the tail. This book launches an attack, scrutinising and exposing a wide range of topics - which is remarkable considering how few pages are allocated to each chapter. The stories are each a master of compression - race, sex, politics, class, mental health, technology and others (including the books own genre) are all examined, but I think, perhaps, free will (vs. determinism) is the thread weaving the collection together. Which is interesting with hindsight, because of course I feel free… until I consider having completed a Zadie Smith book then realise how easily manipulated I was during reading it... ZS take on science fiction in Meet the president is brilliant, from a very human perspective. Of all the stories, this is the one I’d most like to see developed to a full length novel.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Richard
- 30-01-20
Just did not grab my attention and hold it, at all
Everyone has heard of ZS, and I thought it was about time I tried one of her books. I’m afraid that none of the stories in this book grabbed my attention or interest, but I did go end to end just in case.
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