Author Zadie Smith signed her first book deal at 21. Her third book, On Beauty (Penguin) is getting rave reviews and was short-listed for England's prestigious Man Booker Prize. She talked to the San Francisco Chronicle about her work and her apparently effortless rise to the top of the bestseller lists.
"It was very strange and smooth," Smith says in a low voice that sounds a tad like that of CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour. "I always feel very fraudulent if young writers ask me what they should do -- I have no idea. I don't know who you should send your manuscript to or whether you should do an MFA program. I'm clueless."
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Smith, who turns 30 this month, is in the home stretch of a three-week book tour, an exercise she finds absurd -- "you get tired of listening to yourself" -- but which, this time at least, was made less onerous by the presence of her husband, British poet Nick Laird. The couple met at Cambridge University when Smith was 18, and they share a life, she says, that isn't much different from their life as students: "We read and work and watch TV and eat."
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"I was sitting in Golden Gate Park with my husband today," Smith says. "We'd been to the Arboretum and we were reading and sitting on the grass. And I thought how incredibly lucky I am." She grins and then, as if to trick the gods who'd blessed her, she laughs and superstitiously adds, "I'm sure some terrible thing is about to happen to me to balance it all out."
We certainly hope not: she's a most talented writer.
