In the author's note at the beginning of this collection, Zadie said that this short story "came to [her] all at once, as nothing [she has] ever written has before."
This story gives me a weird feeling that neither novel I've written ever has: I truly feel that Hanwell exists somehow. Hanwell seems real to me in a way that Archie and Alsana and Alex-Li and the rest never do; as if this story of mine has opened up a little gap in the world where Hanwell once existed and continues to exist, eternally meeting Clive Black in the back room of a bar and walking with him across that dark, wet residential square in Bristol.
In a way, I believe her 'cos Hanwell now exists for me too. The story lingers and stays with you, like this poignant line:
"We made people unhappy because we ourselves were made unhappy in irrevocable ways."
Yet, there is hope as Hanwell, the colour-blind dishwasher paints a room for his daughters, thinking that the violent red is a sunshine yellow. The book ends with this beautiful sentence:
"Not many men can hope red yellow."
Read it here.
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