This is The Writer's Voice, New Fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treasman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Zadie Smith read her story, The Lazy River,

from the December 18th and 25th, 2017 issue of the magazine.

Smith is the author of five novels, including NW and Swingtime.

Her essay collection, Feel Free, will be published in February.

Now here's Zadie Smith.

The Lazy River.

We're submerged, all of us.

You, me, the children, our friends, their children, everybody else.

Sometimes we get out, for lunch, to read or to tan, never for very long.

Then we all climb back into the metaphor.

The lazy river is a circle, it is wet, it has an artificial current.

Even if you don't move, you will get somewhere and then return to wherever you started.

And if we may speak of the depth of a metaphor,

well then it is about three feet deep,

accepting a brief stretch at which point it rises to six feet four.

Here children scream,

clinging to the walls or the nearest adult until it is three feet deep once more.

Round and round we go.

All life is in here flowing.

Flowing.

...