While reading NW, I found the friendship between Natalie/Keisha and Leah very intriguing. They started out doing everything together, not because of common interests but because of the "dramatic event." Gradually, they grow apart, but throughout the course of the novel it appears as if they're rekindling their friendship. I also found myself curious about how Leah sees their relationship versus how Natalie/Keisha sees it. Both of them seem insecure about being around the other, but for different reasons. I'd like to explore the course of their friendship and the direction it's headed in at the end of the book.

As I was reading NW, I found myself most invested with the character and storyline of Keisha/Natalie. I felt that the discontinuity and split personality of Keisha/Natalie mimicked the structure of the novel NW, which I also saw as a unit that did not have any clear direction, or a real sense of what it was. I would like to take a deeper look into how Keisha/Natalie’s different identities interact, and how although Natalie desperately tries to escape where she is from and her background, Keisha is still always with her. I would also like to see how the structure of her section of the novel is reminiscent of the structure of her life and the novel as a whole, but I think that may be too much to do well and fit into a three-page paper.

I have always wanted to live in England and found London to be one of the most interesting cities I've ever visited.  Because of this what really caught my attention in NW was Zadie's vivid and detailed descriptions of the streets (like those on pages 42-43).  I wondered how she wrote them.  Did she walk down them and record what she saw? Was it all made up? I would like to look at the streets that she gives the most attention to and see what is really there and possibly what the socioeconomic makeup of the area is.

The fragmented stories of the four main characters in NW perplexed me. The book is composed of fragmented words and scenes. And none of the characters have a happy ending, which is what we typically see in novels or movies. The book is not like a mosaic that put broken things together as a whole, but let broken things staying broken. Why does Zadie Smith set the book this way and what does she trying to say or show? Another thing I noticed is fate associated with roots. Natalie, or Keisha, tries to leave her root behind but somewhat still can't shake it off. She leads a perfect life by pretending to be someone else but . In the opposite, Felix accepts his roots and turns into a better person, but he dies. Is this because their fate will follow them no matter what they do or who they become? Is it pointless to try to get out of the poverty they were born into since their roots will follow them along the way? 

I am interested in Felix and what, if anything, is accomplished by giving him an entire section rather than just a mention, besides making the reader care about him. Also, I am not convinced that Nathan killed him and would like to explore that.

I would also like to further explore the structure, but I think I would need another week's time off to write that subject well.

I'm interested in the difference between Leah and Natalie. Leah has spent her whole life going against what was expected of her: she did next to nothing with her college degree, is living in a home worse than the one she grew up in, is deciding not to have children. Natalie, on the other hand, has spent her life doing only what was expected of her: went to college, got an excellent job, lives in a nice house, has a family. Leah, however, appears to be more happy with where she is than Natalie. Why is this? This is made more interesting when we take into account the fact that they grew up together and were best friends...many of the things they did, they did together.

In class we began discussing Keisha/Natalie's near-suicide, and particularly her comments about breaks and "a complete and total rupture" (385).  It got me thinking about Natalie's actual mental breakdown and when it actually occurred (because I don't think it was on top of that bridge), and all of the smaller things leading up to that like her constant name-changing and interest in sex with multiple partners.  It is even more interesting to compare this to the breakdown that Leah has which leads to her sitting out in a hammock seemingly because her dog died. 

Besides this, if this turns out to be too broad of a topic, I also wanted to focus solely on the difference between Keish and Natalie because it is really not as simple as Natalie being the public face and Keisha the true self.  Each of these names come out in very different scenarios and I want to understand the purpose behind the switch.

            When I was reading NW by Zadie Smith something that really stood out to me was Natalie/Keisha’s identity crisis. Throughout her section of the novel, she struggles as she tries to figure out who she is and who she wants others to see her as. As she battles through this, she changes her name back and forth between Keisha (the name she used in her youth) and Natalie (the name she generally kept as an adult). The full extent of her identity crisis is shown in the last page of the book where it says that Natalie called the police and Keisha gave the anonymous tip about Felix’s death. Even though she is, at that point, fully in her adult life, she still struggles with who she really is and where she came from.

I want to focus on Frank's death and how it relates to the theme of agency throughout the book. Frank's death helps Natalie's/Keisha's and Leah's stories move and is very important to the ending of the story (which involves both women). However, I want to know how Frank's death affects Frank's story. Frank is the character with the most agency throughout the story. He not only changes his life around by getting clean and becoming committed to the woman he loves, he recognizes that he needs to change internally in order to lead a happier life. What does the reader learn when Frank dies? Are we supposed to learn that a person with agency will die if they cannot escape poverty? I would prefer not to think so. However, to learn how Frank's death works with the theme of agency in the novel, I want to do a close reading of his death. I think once I understand why his murderers killed him, I will understand the consequences of his death much better.

While reading NW by Zadie Smith was a truly perplexing experience, I found the story of Felix to be the most curious part of the novel. For example, did Smith put him in the book simply for the reader to get attached to him and kill him off in the end (sounds like a tamer Game of Thrones)? It also seemed as if he had two romantic attachments: Annie and Grace, both of whom he was unsure about. That sparked an interest in the romantic attachments of the other characters, like Leah and Michel and Natalie/Keisha and Grace. The relationships in this book seem to be very complex and I'd like to read deeper into how they got together in the first place and how they manage to handle each other.