Zadie Smith

When Zadie Smith’s piece switched from emails to the Belsey’s home life, it was easy to see the false binary that she had set up. We expect Jerome’s world to be stuffy and reserved, as it is in England, and populated with religion and church charities, virgins, internships, and polite and considerate families.

The Belseys, on the other hand, are a cool, hip-ly academic family in America, with (admittedly assumed) Brooklyn accents, busy schedules, children coming and going, a passionate and troubled husband and wife, and curse words. Yet Jerome’s world is the one that is written conversationally, confrontationally, colorfully. Though we have no extraneous information from his correspondence, and don’t know what he looks like or where and who he is other than what is slowly let on, we are allowed to read his emails, and therefore we feel close to him. When we arrive at his parents house the tone changes to formal storytelling, detached from its characters minds. We are told their moods, characteristics, histories, but it is the narrator who must let us in to these secrets, not the characters. This contrast of setting and tone makes us question our initial expectations of situational style.