Book review: Grand Union: Stories, by Zadie Smith

This is Zadie Smith’s first collection of short stories – after six novels and two collections of non-fiction – and I opened it with a strange mixture of trepidation and enthusiasm. I scanned down the list of titles and was vaguely ill at ease. The first thing I read by Zadie Smith was a short story, “Bangs” in McSweeney’s #6 and I was looking forward to reading it again. But “Bangs” there were none. I couldn’t quite understand why such a delightful piece had been omitted. But as I read on it struck me that there is a quality halfway between nostalgia and urgency that would have rendered the story almost obsolete. As it stands, Grand Union is a remarkable collection. It tests the limits of what the short story is, and what it can do.