A smorgasbord of engaging thoughts and ideas

Zadie Smith writes in the Forward to Dead and Alive, her third collection of essays, that you "might start from the first page and just plough through. Or look for a subject that interests you in the Contents, and begin there . . .   Whichever route you choose, you are welcome. Feel free."

I do. And did. Smith doesn't give the option skipping essays entirely (what writer is going to suggest that?) but you can and I did and still found the book stimulating and valuable.

She is a marvelous writer (i.e., filled with marvels) who has published eight novels and a play. She was was born in October 1975 in Willesden, north-west London, to a Jamaican mother and an English father. She attended the University of Cambridge where she studied English literature as an undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge. She published her first novel, White Teeth, in 2000. She taught fiction at Columbia University School of the Arts and joined New York University as a tenured professor of fiction in 2010.

Smith regularly publishes essays and commentary. The essays in Dead and Alive appeared mostly in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and she has published in Kenyon Review, The Guardian, and elsewhere and several appear in the book for the first time.

I am afraid I skipped the book's first five essays which are about art which doubtless reflects my limitation. On the other hand, I was held and fascinated by her comments on five dead writers: Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Martin Amis, and Hilary Mantel.

I didn't expect to enjoy her review of a book that I'd never head of and is not a topic that affects me directly: Black England. But it's a world and a history I know little about and was pleased to learn more.

And her essays on fiction and writing are worth the price of the book if you write or if you are interested in the craft. Indeed, one of the works is called "Consciousness and Consciousness: A Craft Talk for the People and the Person." She has an informative essay "On Writing The Fraud," her most recent novel which I have added to my "To Read" list.

Zadie Smith is an interesting writer with interesting things to say on a variety of topics and she says them clearly and entertainingly. I'm delighted I read as much as I read of Dead and Alive.