The Autograph Man

After the success of the dazzling White Teeth, Zadie Smith's second novel is an altogether more sober book. Alex-Li Tandem is Chinese Jewish and fascinated by the flotsam of 21st century life. He's a man in search of something to believe in - his dead father, the Jewish Yaweh, or the obscure silent-screen actress Kitty Alexander. The fragments that shore him up against his ruin are autographs, for Alex-Li searches out and sells the signatures of the famous. Did you know that a Greta Garbo is worth oodles more than a Ginger Rogers? And the most wanted autograph of them all, for Alex-Li, is a Kitty Alexander. So, when a mystery postcard turns up on his doorstep with the signature of his goddess he zips off to New York to solve the puzzle. Smith is as clever as a Cambridge graduate can be. She has to tell us everything she knows about wrestling, Jewish jokes, the autograph business and the Kaballah. She follows her characters around commenting on their thoughts and actions, not so much an omniscient narrator as a bossy big sister. It's lucky she has an ear for the quirky turn of phrase and an eye for comedy. She also seems to have the other eye glued to the American market. The plot is pure Hollywood - from a dingy London suburb to sparkling New York, with plenty of kooky Jewish characters, Chinese mysticism, a girlfriend with a dodgy ticker and a whore with a heart of gold. It's a great book, and it will make an excellent film. Lucy English is the author of Our Dancing Days (Kirkus UK)