Review: 'Grand Union,' By Zadie Smith Smith's first short story collection is wide-ranging, covering everything from politics to murder to … To consider yourself well versed in contemporary literature without reading short stories is to … Bringing together eleven brand new, never before seen stories and a few well-loved stories previously published in magazines & newspapers, Grand Union explores notions of time and place, identity and rebirth, legacies that haunt us and futures that rush to meet us. It’s almost 20 years since Zadie Smith burst into print, fully armed, with her debut White Teeth, a book so successful that it’s a wonder she survived it. GRAND UNION Stories By Zadie Smith. The new short-story collection 'Grand Union' reads like the lucky synthesis of everything swirling inside Zadie Smith's big, beautiful brain.

3.5 stars Thank you @penguinpress for gifting me an early copy of Grand Union by Zadie Smith! Still, Smith begins and ends with two arresting mother-daughter tales—the first nestled in alienation, the last, “Grand Union,” in communion with the dead. Several of Smith's stories are on their ways to becoming classics.