NW

The bulk of NW presents the world through Natalie’s eyes, although filtered by the lens of the limited narrator. Natalie is intelligent and driven, and nothing seems to stop her from succeeding in life—neither her humble roots, nor her race, nor her economic struggles, nor her controlling mother, nor an initially modest job, nor her first boyfriend (Rodney) or husband (Frank).

While seen as a paradigm of success, Natalie experiences alienation, disaffection, and a yearning for something unknown, just like her best friend, Leah. Though her academic and professional ambitions are constant, the struggles of identity and purpose that follow Natalie from childhood on contribute to her continual evolution. When Leah gives her a vibrator for her 16th birthday, for instance, Keisha/Natalie’s latent sexuality blooms. When her mother forces her to avoid Leah for over a year, she becomes even more entrenched in her academic ambition to counter feelings of alienation. When given the opportunity to get away in college, she sheds her boyfriend Rodney, her religious beliefs, and even her given name. When she finds that her life as a successful barrister, wife, and mother are unsatisfying, she looks for fulfillment in casual threesomes with strangers.

The shifts Natalie goes through drive the novel’s plot, until her near-collapse in “Crossing” and eventual desire to reunite with Frank and to tip off the police about Felix’s murder provide some sense of an ending, however tenuous. In each of these stages of development and change, Natalie searches for purpose and meaning, which elude her. The fact that she inwardly seems compelled to search for fulfillment while simultaneously upholding her domestic and professional life makes clear that the existential crises of modern life described throughout NW touch people at all positions on the socio-cultural-economic spectrum.

Whereas Leah and Natalie are propelled by struggles to find purpose and meaning, Leah’s husband, Michel, is driven by the pursuit of material and social success. For Michel, the path to a meaningful life is clear. First, he wants to increase his income, supplementing his job as a hairdresser with attempts at profiting from currency trading. Second, the resulting economic success he envisions would enable him and Leah to leave their modest apartment and buy a more impressive home. Finally, Michel is insistent that he and Leah need to have children.

Though Michel represents the desire for success as defined in modern urban life, each of these ambitions is thwarted. Frank advises Michel to be wary of currency trading, Michel and Leah remain in their flat, and Leah’s secret abortion and use of birth control prevent them from having children. By holding on to ambitions of success that elude him, Michel makes Leah’s and Natalie’s existential crises seem all the more pressing.

Michel does undergo his own evolution, however, at the moment of one of the book’s most urgent crises. When Leah collapses mentally, Michel is upset about her lying to him about trying to become pregnant. Nevertheless, he sheds his economic and social ambitions to instead turn attention to the woman he loves, frantically asking Natalie, “Why does she hate me?” and begging her to come help Leah recover (396). Significantly, it is while talking to Michel in his moment of pain, fear, and agony that Natalie first comes to reassess her life and walk back from her own near-breakdown.

Like Michel, Frank is associated with economic and social success—the difference being that while Michel yearns for it, Frank seems to have attained it. Born in Italy to a white mother and a black father, Frank also represents the multiculturalism touched on throughout the novel, yet he is distinct from other characters with immigrant roots (especially Natalie, Michel, and Felix) because he was born into a relatively well-off family.

While professionally ambitious and educated like Natalie, Frank initially lacks seriousness. He becomes drunk at an important school dinner, for instance, and later fails the bar exam. He demonstrates an ability to bounce back from challenges and advances professionally as an investment banker. Ultimately, Frank transforms, settling into domesticity and fatherhood while, unbeknownst to him, Natalie pursues a secret life.

This contrast helps depict the extent of Natalie’s crisis. The questions she faces—about motherhood, success, and happiness—appear even more urgent in the face of Frank’s seemingly effortless acceptance of life. Frank, however, is hurt by the discovery of Natalie’s secret, refusing to even accept a note of explanation from her. When Natalie experiences Michel’s and Leah’s pain during their own domestic crisis at the end of the novel, she begins to understand Frank’s.