NW

Leah, who mentions her pregnancy to Shar but not even Michel, decides to get an abortion. Initially ignorant, he discovers how Leah misled him by the end of the novel. This episode demonstrates the stark contrasts between Leah and Michel and their inability to reconcile their incompatible versions of what they want from life. 

This section introduces Leah’s friend Natalie and her husband, Frank. Later parts of NW detail the long, complex relationship between Natalie and Leah. The take-away from the first interaction between the two couples, however, is the stark class and professional contrast between them. While Leah and Michel work modest jobs at a non-profit and hairdresser’s, Natalie and Frank are a successful barrister and banker, respectively. While Leah flounders to find meaning in life and Michel yearns to get ahead, Natalie and Frank apparently have made it, looking “like a king and queen in profile on an ancient coin,” in Natalie’s mind (67). Later, it becomes clear that Natalie and Frank have their own serious issues. In “Visitation,” their problems are foreshadowed only at the carnival party, when Leah notices that Frank and Natalie hardly interact. 

The external threats that were hinted at in the first sections of “Visitation” become physically realized in its second half. After verbal threats from Shar and a mysterious caller, and then the attack on Olive, the narrator notes that it “could be said that one of Michel’s dreams has come true: they have gone up one rung, at least in the quality and elaboration of their fear” (102). 

Several weeks later, Michel and Leah learn of the fatal stabbing of Felix Cooper. This turns out to be Felix, who is introduced in Part 2 of NW, and the incident is revisited from several perspectives throughout the novel. The initial conflict of the novel—Shar’s theft of Leah’s money—occurred in private space, after Leah invited her into her apartment. As the drama and violence heighten, they increasingly take place in the wider, public space of northwest London: first the attack on Olive, then the murder of Felix. This shift corresponds to a gradual pull to see seemingly private, domestic problems like those that Leah faces as systemic, social issues. 

In “Visitation,” the impact of the violence remains localized in the breakdown it precipitates in Leah. She mourns the death of Olive powerfully, and the fleeting spark of life brought on by the drama of Shar and the pride Leah felt at Michel defending her during the street attack quickly fades. The fracture between her and Michel continues to grow—he thinks they are trying to get pregnant, while she secretly takes birth control. The tipping point for Leah is when she discovers pictures of Shar mixed in with her own. Although readers are not shown the full extent of Leah’s subsequent breakdown until Part 5 (also called “Visitation”), the improbable fact that Shar’s photos were mixed in with hers hints at her mental instability. The narrator comments that the coincidence “[s]ounds reasonable but she can’t take it reasonably” (108). 

The incident shows that the issues and pressures Leah and others face—marriage, family, children, crime, class, society, work, ambition—have a powerful impact on mental health. NW depicts London as chaotic, dizzying, and stressful, regardless of its ostensibly high standard of living and international stature. This sense of chaos is reflected in the novel’s stylistic experimentations, which continue throughout “Visitation.” NW could be compared to works like James Joyce’s classic Ulysses, which similarly utilizes a mix of experimental styles and genres and celebrates the geography of a world-famous city (Dublin). On the other hand, NW is contemporary in its themes, and its structure could reflect the confusion and conflicts of modern life even as it gives a nod to the tradition of literary experimentalism.