Books of the Month

'The Book of Other People' edited by Zadie Smith

Over the years short story anthologies have been clustered around all sorts of themes - some blindingly obvious, some rather more tenuous. The premise for this one is disarmingly simple: that each writer introduces a character, whose name becomes the title of their story. There's not much more to it than that, but of course, writers being what they are, this briefest of briefs has been interpreted as widely and as liberally as you'd expect.

What this means is that the resulting book doesn't feel like it's got an overbearing theme. Instead of all the stories being told from a certain perspective, or in a certain style, we've got light-hearted stories, serious stories, stories set in all manner of locations, murder mysteries, monsters, hardships and hilarity. There's no danger of getting bored working your way through 24 versions of the same idea. What really sets this collection apart though is the quality of the people invited to take part. As editor Zadie Smith has used her uniquely trans-Atlantic literary position to bring in some great talent from the United States and the UK. And that means not just renowned writers but great graphic artists too. They're not even doing it for the money either, because this is a charity anthology.

The quality of the work is unusually consistent. Normally you'd expect a handful of stories that don't work, or that fall below the standard of the others, or that just don't do anything for you, but generally speaking there's something to appreciate in almost all of them.  Some writers have used the commission as an opportunity to flex their comic muscle - there are genuinely funny stories from Hari Kunzru, David Mitchell and Miranda July in this vein. But there's also plenty of space for the poignant (Colm Toibin), the downright weird (Toby Litt), and the thought-provoking (George Saunders).

Most importantly though, it succeeds where evry good anthlogy should: by introducing the reader to the work of writers they haven't come across before. I hadn't heard of George Saunders, and had only the vaguest idea of who Jonathan Lethem might be, but now they've shown up on my radar, I'll be looking out for more work by them in the future.

Susan Tranter

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