Feel Free: Essays

This is a Zadie at her best, I feel. As a speaker/thinker/writer on culture and language, she is gifted and able to think through events and experiences in a way that really gives the reader a fresh perspective. I tore through this in two days (though do NOT buy the Audible version as I purchased both just to support her. The audiobook sadly presents her work by a different reader who is dull and reads as though she's half asleep without the charm and nuance that Zadie has when you hear her speak during readings/lectures/presentations/interviews. The reader chosen just absolutely kills the work. Think some conservative man without inflection reading David Sedaris. This is just an opinion but if you can just read it and that way you have her voice in your head when you do). That said, the essay collection is truly phenomenal. Her ability to go high low and interweave culture and social perspectives is really a wonderful reading experience.

The current cultural landscape is a wasteland littered with superheroes, fast cars, and enough visceral responses to elicit bar-fight-style brawls out in public.It is refreshing then to read the essays in “Feel Free” as they feel like a cerebral rollercoaster, full of inverted perceptions on our current state of affairs as well as an in-depth look at things people take for granted.Take for example her essay on Facebook titled “Generation Why.”Smith compliments Zuckerberg for the achievement of developing one of the largest online communities, but she also points out some negative sides to Facebook. How some people use the social media platform in a solipsistic manner to confirm their own views of the world.But the essays are not limited to commentary on our social interactions. One focuses on an interview with Jay-Z, and how Smith compares the rap superstar to “Paradise Lost” author John Milton. How both employ the power of boasting to further their artistic forms to reach the apex of their respective forms.The one section which I could do without is her most lengthy set of essays in the collection, all under the header the Harper’s Columns. This is not to say these pieces are written poorly by any means. They are stylistically quite good, as is to be expected from Smith. No, they just feel out of place in the larger context of the collection.While the other essays are concerned with social issues, cultural pieces, and experiences strolling through a garden, this small collection feels like a friend talking to you about a book you haven’t read or significant points in a movie you haven’t seen. There are no spoilers per se, just a bit of confusion if you haven’t read the books she is reviewing.The essays are thoughtful and fun though. Readers will laugh from time-to-time, and they will also stop to ponder art, politics, and everything in between.

A brilliant book of essays by a gifted writer. When it arrived I was browsing through it and over and over again a few lines would catch my eye and I would end up reading a few pages. Finally decided to drop the other books I was reading and start on this immediately. She has some great insights to our world.

I first heard of Zadie Smith through her comments on fiction in the New York Review of books. Her insights and questions kept my attention and remained in my mind long after I put the article down. Of course, reading her essays, her body of work became the next "must do." Zadie Smith is an author of masterful questions and discussions. Her writings are the friend you wish to discuss your ideas with. She is surprising, sensible, outrageous, purposeful. I can't get enough of her work. Everything she publishes will be something I can't wait to read.

It was my first reading of this writers work. As a result I will read more essays and more by Zadie Smith. It also raised my interest in several other books noted in her writing as well as encouraging a fresh look at the art of Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. The timing and contrasts along with a wide scope of thought made this book both a joy and a pleasure.

Reading this book is almost like having a conversation and Zadie Smith happens to be an extremely intelligent yet cool person. She can say profound things while discussing a wide range of topics. In the meantime, she does not show off nearly as much as some other writers.

Zadie is a great essayist. You won't be disappointed. My family is reading these essays aloud in the evening.

I got halfway through this book and did not finish it. She is an excellent writer but these essays are of specific relevance to a British audience. I am an American. So much of it was unrelatable.

Too long. It'd have been so much better 50% as long with all the best bits put together. But is warm and insightful into other cultures and backgrounds and there are some brilliantly funny bits.

I really loved a number of these essays. So precisely and eloquently-written, funny, frank..not all of them appealed to me. I'm not interested in dissecting a piece of visual art, and a whole section was devoted to that. But the majority of them were very readable - spending time in her supersmart company is most pleasant.

This series of essays explores the meaning of freedom from her view as a biracial . For me,it opened up discussions relating to hi-hop, art,fame , literature, film and other aspects of popular culture. Ms. Smith understands both the British and American opinions as well as her own. I learned a great deal and thoroughly enjoyed her writing style..

Algunos interesan quizás menos los/las lectoras europeas, pero en general se trata de una colección muy interesante de ensayos sobre muchos temas culturales diferentes y permite descubrir nuevos autores, artistas, etc.

Reading Zadie Smith I am so over awed I feel like a knuckle dragging drooling half wit, as she bends my mind in two while she has thoughts and observations that would absolutely never tumble into my consciousness.