Willesden Redux In a 2008 essay for The New York Review of Books , 'Two Paths for the Novel', Zadie Smith aired her discontent with what has become the dominant yet pat contemporary literary mode: lyrical realism. Her case study was Netherland by Joseph O'Neill, but she could also have cited John Lanchester's more recent Capital , her own 2005 effort On Beauty , or a plethora of novels published in the past 30 years, as exemplary of a form that aims to recast Balzac and Flaubert for the modern day. Each adheres to Realism's credos: "the transcendent importance of form, the incantatory power of language to reveal truth, the essential fullness and continuity of the self". That is, cultivated prose style, verisimilitude, and, most importantly, affective characters within archetypal narratives. Smith appends some pertinent questions: "Is [lyrical realism] really the closest model we have to our condition? Or simply the bedtime story that comforts us most?" In the second half of her article Smith lauds the "avant-garde" knowingness of Tom McCarthy's Remainder , its disavowal of lyricism and narrative chicanery. For Smith, "[Remainder] clears away a little of the dead wood". Approaching NW it is evident Smith does not want to add any more "dead wood". She rejects the bedtime comforts of cogent narrative and stylistic transparency within the novel's opening pages. Prismatic stream of consciousness narration introduces Leah Hanwell -- "Fag in hand. Fleshy, lobster-red. / I am the sole / I am the sole author" -- recumbent