Zadie Smith’s success story reads like a Cambridge dream. She was barely out of her King’s matriculation gown when she was snapped up by a publisher, after her writing was spotted in the annual Mays Anthology. White Teeth was released in 2001; and a novelist was born. In Changing My Mind, however, we encounter Smith in different apparel or rather, in a whole host of outfits: lecturer, essayist, reviewer, social commentator, memoir writer. At a talk she gave in Cambridge back in 2008 she displayed the same chameleon-like quality. Reprinted here as That Crafty Feeling, Smith was as astute, intelligent and cogent as she was personable, conversational and witty; qualities which flash through this collection too.

Her essay Rereading Barthes and Nabokov bravely quotes Nabokov’s cynicism of the critics, ‘Every good reader has enjoyed a few good books in his life so why analyse the pleasures that both sides know?’ In response, Smith approaches these texts with intimate knowledge, and through the lens of her own experience as writer and reader, produces criticism which is creative and worthwhile. Her film reviews are refreshing too. Get Rich or Die Trying summons reactive comedy: “My brain is giving you one star, but my heart wants to give five... I love, love, love it.”

Smith now teaches a fiction course in New York, a fact made obvious by her adoption of certain uncomfortable Americanisms. As when she compares Will with Barack. That’s William Shakespeare and Barack Obama. It’s not as bad as it sounds. But this inter-continental shape shifting is symptomatic of the book; in doing a bit of everything, it risks losing a firm readership. Luckily, Smith’s writer’s talent of engaging with the worlds around her, however disparate, carry the reader through.