It's been a while since any novelist arrived on the literary scene with quite such an explosion as Zadie Smith. Now that the dazzle is subsiding, there is the inevitable cloud of smoke: most conspicuously she didn't, as expected, win the Orange Prize (one judge, apparently, declared "over my dead body"). But Oranges are not the only fruit: Smith is certain to win some prize or other before this year is out.

Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway. At 06.27 hours on 1 January 1975, Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in corduroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate face down on the steering wheel, hoping the judgement would not be too heavy upon him. He lay forward in a prostrate cross, jaw slack, arms splayed either side like some fallen angel; scrunched up in each fist he held his army service medals (left) and his marriage licence (right), for he had decided to take his mistakes with him. A little green light flashed in his eye, signalling a right turn he had resolved never to make. He was resigned to it. He was prepared for it. He had flipped a coin and stood staunchly by its conclusions. This was a decided-upon suicide. In fact it was a New Year's resolution.