One minute he’s Felix, ripping off a trustafarian (£450 for that MG, it’s worth 10 times that!), eyeing up the ladies, full of the joys of life and lust, impossible not to fall for. He doesn’t have anything to do with the others, apart from living near them, until a random act of kindness toward a fellow traveller on the tube leads to an encounter with Nathan and his evil little gang leader: not a good encounter. Felix is on the way up – not in a Natalie kind of way, just in a sorting-himself-out kind of way: not drinking, not becoming his dad. A wasted (in all senses) talent, now he’s a beggar and a pimp.įinally Felix: my favourite – for both the character and OT Fagbenle’s lovely performance. Also at school with Leah and Keisha, he was adored by them – by everyone – until he grew up and became less adorable. The man begging at the tube is Nathan ( Richie Campbell) who once had a trial with QPR. Leah wants love, not children, God bless her.Īnd the male characters. History’s important too though, and it’s a touching friendship even if it’s a friendship that, if it was starting now, almost certainly wouldn’t start, if you see what I mean.

Then there’s Leah ( Phoebe Fox), Keisha’s old school friend, though now all they really have in common is shared history. Later it becomes impossible not to sympathise with her when you see what she, a black woman, had to go through to get here, and when you see the depth of her sadness. Not everything’s as it seems though: she’s hooking up with randoms on a sex app she’s a fraud, and ridiculous, and unhappy. Keisha/Natalie ( Nikki Amuka-Bird) – lawyer, perfect family, perfect house, garden furniture, perma-glass of Chablis, girl-done-good. The place – this part of town, and what it says about this country today – is perfect and has never felt so relevant. But it’s still wonderful, and it can – and does – get to something that’s totally in the spirit of the novel, thanks to that super-loyalty. Something has to go, and what does go is a lot of that writing the experience of sitting through this can’t replicate the literary one – of sitting down with the book.

Especially such an unconventionally shaped and writerly novel. It can’t have been easy, trying to squeeze 300-plus pages into 90 minutes of television.

Zadie smith nw review