The big picture
27th Sep 2005, 12:48 GMT
FictionZadie Smith has a real novelistic gift. Her works are never short stories or novellas or lyric poems in disguise, but long, complex, polyphonic narratives: novels as we know they ought to be. She can do parties - "it was the kind of party where every hour two people leave and 30 arrive". Most writers are well advised to avoid any group larger than three, but Zadie Smith can control a crowd like the riot police.