It's the new European immigrant experience, and it's exploding all over the pages of Euro fiction. You want to ship those Moroccans, those Turks, those Indians and Pakistanis and Jamaicans and Indonesians on over for cheap labor to build the Eden that is post-Marshall Plan mambo security net Western Europe, you best expect that those second-generationers, the ones who refuse to return to the fatherland, or who ain't hooked up with the West-hating fundamentalist gangs or who aren't bitterly running corner stores, are going to document their in-between experience, and it's gonna be a mishmash of failed multi-culti and cries of "They'll never accept us" and "Where the white women at?" and "Where's the Allah motive for getting me some dead whitey payback from this decadent society that won't love me?" Euros want the brown man to assimilate but to stay in his place, to speak the language but to deliver the curry. To do the jobs no self-respecting white Euro would lower himself to do, but to stop taking self-respecting white Euro jobs. Euros want freedom of expression and freedom of religion as long as women wear cleavage-bearing halters, crack-revealing jeans and pouty, ready-to-suck mouths. Veils are such a downer. God is to be taught only in the History Department, and conservatives are to be shipped back to Berlin for sensitivity training. Americans are to be publicly ridiculed, easily dismissed and aggressively obsessed over. Marriage is to be tolerated but winked at as quaint.

Well, our list could go on and on and perhaps you think I exaggerate, but you, dear lover of the museum of Europe, would be wrong. This is the cake-and-eat-it-too house of cards that is modern European society (excuse my mixed metaphors- I'm on a Heineken deadline- the hypocrisy extends in both directions), and it is on that canvas that Zadie Smith lays her first novel, delivered at the suicide-inducing-jealousy age of 24. What more can be said about the precocious one's first assault on the public domain? Let's try a few obvious questions for non-believers and disdainers of chick lit.

Is the hoopla just cuz she's young and hot? Only minorly, although indeed she is both of those things. She also has wit, craft, talent, knowledge and occasional wisdom. Not that those things necessarily mean a complete success, but to deny them is to call yourself a bitter, middle-aged, failed novelist, which may be good enough to get you in the back door of The Graduate, but you'll only be hanging with Zadie at all the best parties when you bend over to replace her butter knife.

If you threw out her age and sexy mouth, how would you rate the book? I'd applaud, with reservations. She has produced a work that tackles multiple time periods, cultures, subcultures, dialects, family relationships, BIG societal questions, and more. She is also very funny. She is also overly precious at times, and her insistence on providing the back history of every character (including one on page 398 of a 448 page book) bogs down the plot and suggests bravado on her part, or even formula. The end borders on miraculous magical realism, and she has no moral point of view. That vacuum leads one to believe that she's one of those Berkeley relativists, never condemning and always offering explanations and justifications for characters' behavior, however reprehensible.

Did you enjoy it? Yes, I did, but I would have taken out close to 100 pages, and it would have been a better book, because I am the undiscovered Max Perkins of my generation.

Will you read another book by Ms. Smith? Yes, but not until I drag several people down to the new Indian restaurant for another round of tandoori and pilsner. A man needs motivation, after all, which should come via your generous offer to pay for my insight. I'd prefer a table by the window.