In today's episode, Mandy and Mio (re)visit Swing Time, a book they both read in the past and didn't like all that much, only to find out that they like it now! After all these years! What made reading Zadie Smith's most recent novel different this time? How do they navigate the book's sudden shifts from discussing problematic friendships to toxic work dynamics? Find out, as Mio not only tries to sing the title of the book in as many different ways as he can think of, but also tries to make a basketball metaphor that is—mm, to quote ESPN—dead on the launchpad, Stan.
cw: this novel includes discussions of slavery, adoption fraud, allegations of sexual abuse, allegations that one of the characters fetishizes black women
Show notes:
- Interview with NBCC Fiction Finalist Zadie Smith in The New School
- Novelist Zadie Smith on Historical Nostalgia and the Nature of Talent in NPR Fresh Air with Terry Gross
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Our theme music: 64 Sundays by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Artist: http://www.twinmusicom.org/