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White Teeth

by Zadie Smith

3.66 · rating details · 30,699 ratings · 2,384 reviews

On New Year's morning, 1975, Archie Jones sits in his car on a London road and waits for the exhaust fumes to fill his Cavalier Musketeer station wagon. Archie—working-class, ordinary, a failed marriage under his belt—is calling it quits, the deciding factor being the flip of a 20-pence coin. When the owner of a nearby halal butcher shop (annoyed that Archie's car is block...more

Paperback, 448 pages

Published May 20th 2003 by Vintage (first published 2000)

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Jul 15, 2007

Ben rated it

Shelves: 2007

White Teeth is an expansive, detailed, and beautifully written attempt to encapsulate the social chaos that blossoms at the bridging of generational, national and sexual mindsets. It reminds me very much of the freeflowing histories written by Marquez and Allende, as well as Salman Rushdie's strange little one-off treatise on cultural alienation, Fury. (Samad, in particular, reminds me quite a bit of Fury's Malik Solanka.)

The book does many things well. Smith has a serious ear for di...moreWhite Teeth is an expansive, detailed, and beautifully written attempt to encapsulate the social chaos that blossoms at the bridging of generational, national and sexual mindsets. It reminds me very much of the freeflowing histories written by Marquez and Allende, as well as Salman Rushdie's strange little one-off treatise on cultural alienation, Fury. (Samad, in particular, reminds me quite a bit of Fury's Malik Solanka.)

The book does many things well. Smith has a serious ear for dialogue and accent, she knows how to manage the flow and pacing of a story, and she's quite skilled at employing large concepts (genetic manipulation, immigrant psychology, the concept of history itself) both as fact and as metaphor. Her cast of characters is varied and nearly every one of them comes off as a fully flesh and blood human being. However, it's in terms of these personalities that I feel she makes her biggest misstep.

Zadie Smith is what I'd call an Ironist. I don't mean this in the Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Jon Stewart sense. I don't mean that she's a comedian. I mean it in the sense that the territory she stands on--that her narrator in White Teeth stands on--is one whose boundaries are staked out in terms of what she is not. My friend Brandon commented below that Smith shows "blatant contempt for every character except the one who is clearly based on the author." While I understand where he's coming from, I don't think it's contempt per se. On the contrary, I think Smith has deep feelings for most of her characters--even the more despicable ones like Crispin and Millat. I think that what Brandon interprets as contempt is something far more ambiguous: let's call it detached superiority.

The Ironist defines herself through the process of over-defining others. Every character in this novel is over-defined, over-drawn. While this provides us with a great, at times excruciating level of detail, it also paints each of them into a kind of cage wherein all of their actions are predictable. Each of them has a sort of "final vocabulary" (cf. Rorty) that defines the limits of what they might do or say--the doctrines of Islam and the Watchtower Society, of PETA or clinical science. In the worst cases, their adherence to these vocabularies allows Smith to slip them into easy "types" (see: Mr. Topps, Crispin, Joshua, Marcus, the various members of FATE). Smith creates her authorial/narrative identity--what's called a metastable personality--by passively proving that she is not limited by such a final vocabulary, and that in escaping their confines she has a broader, more comprehensive view of the social workings of the world. This is, generally speaking, the goal of any omniscient narrator, but the way that Smith goes about writing this one in particular imparts a certain sense of smugness (the parenthetical asides to the reader, the knowing winks, the jokes at the expense of easy targets) that isn't always present.

The metastable personality is the natural reaction to uncomfortability with final vocabularies, but it itself is of course just as self-defining as any of them (albeit in the opposite direction). It instinctually yearns for instability, but prefers to admire chaos from afar rather than living in it. The metastable personality knows that in order to maintain coherence it must remain stable, and that the only way to remain stable is to balance itself on the disbelief of all known final vocabularies. Smith writes off worldview after worldview, but is of course unable to articulate her own because her own is simply the absence of adherence to any such worldview.

This isn't so much a criticism of Smith's work as it is an explanation of why it is the way it is, and why it can be read as contempt. (less)

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Jul 28, 2011

RandomAnthony rated it

I'm about a decade late to Zadie Smith's White Teeth, one of those books friends recommended or I picked up at the library then put back and moved on to a different title. My reticence to read the novel revolved around the plethora of book-clubby texts that could best be classified as “somewhat patronizing novels about other cultures featuring triumph in the face of great poverty and hardship.” I hate these books. But White Teeth turns out be an example of where those novels fail and a sun...moreI'm about a decade late to Zadie Smith's White Teeth, one of those books friends recommended or I picked up at the library then put back and moved on to a different title. My reticence to read the novel revolved around the plethora of book-clubby texts that could best be classified as “somewhat patronizing novels about other cultures featuring triumph in the face of great poverty and hardship.” I hate these books. But White Teeth turns out be an example of where those novels fail and a sun-surface hot writer can embrace the complexity inherent in both the smaller and larger narratives of multiple generations. Zadie Smith's talent and enthusiasm are tangible; she writes like she's bouncing up and down in her seat.

White Teeth is as much about inertia as free will. Samad and Archie, brought together by their bad luck and questionable soldiering circumstances, spend much of their time in a decrepit English pub. Archie marries a Jamaican woman he meets on a stairway at a stranger's New Year's Day party. Samad's wife, Alsana, and Archie's wife, Clara, form a careful friendship. The friends' children are first-generation English carrying histories and expectations; Samad and Alsana's twin boys and Archie and Clara's daughter inhabit the no man's land between tradition and the present that, really, is everyone's land. Questions of loyalty, tradition, and identity emerge in the flash of conflict and creaking, inevitable societal evolution. As Alsana notes, circumstances emerge in which people are involved, to use her word, without intention but without question. When the two families encounter the white, affluent Chalfens, the cheeriest, most cluelessly evil parents I may have ever encountered in literature, twin brothers reunite (or at least occupy the same country), and the book's last hundred pages race to a thriller-esque ending that, while not tying every loose end, left me feeling as if I had read a singular, satisfying novel. Smith doesn't rely on easy, obvious immigration issues to drive White Teeth; she goes much deeper into characters' minds and families without preaching.

I hope I'm not making White Teeth sound pious. In fact, I would argue Smith wrote the novel in part as a reaction to the piety that obscures truthful narrative. She builds each character from the ground up and knows when to move from one to the next. I'm also not sure if I understood every metaphorical nuance; I'm not English, Bengali, Muslim, or a Jehovah's Witness, all elements intrinsic to the storyline, so I most likely missed symbolic elements. While I don't want to minimize the immigrant experience, white readers, I believe, feel some of the same vertigo as the characters when navigating a landscape with different cultural touchstones, e.g. signs in Polish and Korean up and down Chicago's Milwaukee Avenue. Zadie Smith doesn't praise or criticize these landscapes. She focuses on the fear and hope inherent in characters' reactions to the stimuli. The players can't control the landscape as much as accept and respond to it. This is a sprawling, well-structured novel. White Teeth is a near-masterwork, the best book I've ever read about different cultures' slow, tectonic plate-like creep past, toward, and into each other.

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Jun 16, 2008

Leslie rated it

As many other reviewers have commented, I wanted to like this book more than I did. It approached greatness in many ways---the clever and often hilarious dialogue, the quirky characters, the creative family histories, the rich and convincing place descriptions, and so on. Despite the strengths of each of these parts, as a whole the book fell far short of greatness. It took me until the final pages to figure out what was missing for me: I did not genuinely care about most of the characters. I did...more

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Jan 30, 2011

Paul rated it

Shelves: novels

One star? Of course this is not a one-star wretched ignominous failure, this is a mighty Dickensian epic about modern Britain. But not for me. It's a question of tone. I have now tried to read this one twice and each time I find I'm groaning quietly and grinding my teeth. Zadie Smith's omniscient narrator, alas for me, has an air of horrible smirkiness, like a friend who just can't help pointing out all the less than pleasant attributes of everyone else, all in the name of life-affirming humour,...more

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Dec 02, 2007

Dan rated it

This book started bad for me and just got worse. I found the characters to be boring and two-dimensional. Actually, even worse, the author tried to build up the characters in most cases (though doing a poor job, I'd say), but then later reduced their roles to caricatures. So even those I was inclined to like wound up irritating me every time they opened their mouths.

Further, Smith's style is all over the place. At times I found it indulgent and pretentious, others fawningly resem...more

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Apr 18, 2011

Elisa rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: letteratura-inglese

"Voleva l'Uno, ma il mondo è Molti".

Il modo in cui Zadie Smith racconta la multiculturalità mi fa venire in mente un enorme Cubo di Rubik. Il colore della pelle è solo una delle tante discriminanti dei piccoli tasselli di plastica. Orientamento sessuale, sesso biologico, religione e patriottismo tempestano le facce del cubo di orde di colori differenti, tante piccole identità che cercano affannosamente di formare una facciata intera per poi tingere l'intero cubo del propri...more"Voleva l'Uno, ma il mondo è Molti".

Il modo in cui Zadie Smith racconta la multiculturalità mi fa venire in mente un enorme Cubo di Rubik. Il colore della pelle è solo una delle tante discriminanti dei piccoli tasselli di plastica. Orientamento sessuale, sesso biologico, religione e patriottismo tempestano le facce del cubo di orde di colori differenti, tante piccole identità che cercano affannosamente di formare una facciata intera per poi tingere l'intero cubo del proprio colore. In cerca di appoggio, comprensione, affermazione. Giamaicani, bengalesi, inglesi, ebrei e irlandesi abitano nella capitale dell'ex impero britannico, e combattono la loro personale battaglia con la madre acquisita. Londra a volte è un caldo ventre, altre un frigido terreno di guerre e umiliazioni. L'integrazione è ora l'oggetto di un desiderio, ora un maligno demone da respingere per non perdere se stessi.

La quarta di copertina individua gli amici Archibald e Samad come protagonisti della storia. In realtà, quasi tutti i personaggi sono a loro modo protagonisti. Lo è Samad, bengalese trapiantato in Inghilterra dopo la seconda guerra mondiale, musulmano rigoroso ma combattuto tra i dettami di Allah e le tentazioni del canto di sirena occidentale (che per l'occasione ha deciso di chiamarsi "Poppy"). Lo è Archibald, inglese per nascita e residenza, indeciso per natura e ancorato alle decisioni altrui o al lancio di una moneta. Lo è Alsana, la giovanissima moglie di Samad, piccola e sottomessa alle decisioni del marito, ma che nasconde un paio di piedi enormi sotto il sari (e una strabiliante abilità nella lotta corpo a corpo). Lo è Clara, la seconda moglie giamaicana di Archie, con un passato da Testimone di Geova per costrizione familiare e una vita di letture davanti. Lo sono Millat e Magid, i figli gemelli di Samad. Lo è Irie, la figlia di Archie e Clara. E lo sono anche Hortense, Ryan, Joshua, la famiglia Chalfen. Un universo di individui attirati come falene da ideologie e convinzioni diametralmente opposte, un'entropia pronta a divenire movimento. Un intrico di fili elettrici su cui l'autrice non manca di gettare un'enorme secchiata d'acqua, generando un corto circuito.
Il ruolo di protagonisti che i personaggi condividono nasce dalla decisione della Smith, che li porta tutti - a turno o a gruppi - sul palcoscenico, li posiziona sotto l'abbagliante luce dei riflettori e li descrive con ironia e sagacia. Pagina dopo pagina, la parola "identità" viene pronunciata da molteplici volti: un cubo di Rubik variamente assortito.

In questo caotico bestiario umano tutti hanno in comune qualcosa: i denti. Denti bianchi, dalle radici solide o ciondolanti, denti ingombranti e vistosi, denti finti occidentalizzati: simbolo della propria identità, ricercata o respinta, esaltata o nascosta con vergogna. L'immagine dei denti ritorna quando meno te lo aspetti: anche essere fumatore aggiunge un tassello al tuo bisogno di identità, depositando una giallognola patina sulla tua dentatura. La simbologia non è mai ridondante, perché riemerge solo a tratti, come un filo conduttore che gioca a nascondino e qualche volta sbuca dal suo antro nascosto per farsi ammirare e contemplare in relazione agli eventi.

Devo dire qualcosa sulla prosa di Zadie Smith? Essenziale e corposa. E' un paradosso, ma c'è una tale ricchezza in queste cinquecento pagine da rimanere esterrefatti. Non aspettatevi i convenevoli delle classiche saghe familiari: il parlato dei nostri personaggi è fortemente imbevuto della loro identità e del loro tempo. Usano "cazzo" come "un contorno di piselli e funghi". Sono plasmati dalla televisione e dal cinema Hollywoodiano, dalle mode degli anni ottanta e dall'appartenenza alle micro-tribù metropolitane. I loro comportamenti sono il risultato della rivoluzione sessuale occidentale, dell'abisso che si è creato tra genitori e figli negli ultimi decenni del '900. Portano addosso il peso del passare del tempo, che porta sempre con sé il suo strascico brillante o oscuro di conseguenze.

B E L L O.
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Jul 08, 2008

C. rated it

The story of the families of two WW2 veteran buddies living in North London. Archie is a white man who marries a younger black woman from a religious West Indian household. Samad is from Bengal and had an arranged marriage to a fiery younger woman, conveniently the same age as Archie's younger wife, and they had twin sons. One of the twin sons was sent back to Bengal, the other stayed in London. Both reacted to the culture of their homeland and the culture in England in strange ways. So did ever...more

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Jul 03, 2007

Katherine M rated it

· review of another edition

White Teeth was a clear testament to Smith's skills as a writer, powerfully intertwining the stories of families from different ethnic communities. Smith's colorful descriptions make every character come alive in the story. As she did in On Beauty, she uses as social and political issues as the backdrop for her thoughtful family portraits. The most impressive aspect of Smith's writing is her ability to tackle difficult social issues while capturing the subtlety of complex interpersonal relati...more

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Mar 08, 2009

Lizzie rated it

Shelves: 2009, sold-to-the-strand

Man, I've got to read something really good really soon. Not my favorite streak I'm having. I bought this paperback (it is a green one, I wish my cover was on GoodReads!) when it was brand new, and I've moved it with me a dozen times unread. So hopeful! Oh well.

There just wasn't any meaning for me. No one was moving, no development felt impactful, several were distasteful. Nothing I thought had a through-line did. I thought I saw the ending coming and it turned out to just be ...more

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Apr 15, 2011

Leo rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fuckyeah

So it's not perfect. I understand that.
But I can't remember the last time a book this long has thoroughly captivated me, entertained me and struck a subtle chord in me all at the same time.
A lot of other reviews have valid points: all the characters do diminish into caricatures at certain points (but don't we as well?), the last hundred pages or so were a bit tiring, and the ending felt a bit anticlimactic and rushed.
My favorite aspect of this novel was Smith's keen eye for tur...more

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Feb 06, 2008

Krys rated it

My trusted source of recommendations most decidedly did NOT recommend this book, but I admit that I liked it far better than her.

That being said, despite the wonderfully poignant moments that expose the complications interracial relations in London, the book felt very scattered. Divided into sections, each portion of the novel primarily focuses on one individual in a small circle of relevant characters. The sections also (more or less) progress in chronological order over fifty years...moreMy trusted source of recommendations most decidedly did NOT recommend this book, but I admit that I liked it far better than her.

That being said, despite the wonderfully poignant moments that expose the complications interracial relations in London, the book felt very scattered. Divided into sections, each portion of the novel primarily focuses on one individual in a small circle of relevant characters. The sections also (more or less) progress in chronological order over fifty years, so the later sections include the children of the characters in the first two. The novel starts and ends with Archie, who is unfortunately the flattest character (ironically the least prejudiced it should be noted). He is largely useless throughout the two thirds of the book until the last few pages, which finally reveal a moment that happened to him from fifty years past. Such a move, awarding the significance allotted to the novel's last moments, suggests an importance to an event that has really had nothing to do with the story as a whole. And paired with the way in which Smith abandons all the tension she built over the last third of the novel with Archie's daughter, it leaves to wonder (alternately) what was the point of the first part of the story, or the second, because neither are followed through with due diligence. Which is not to say that I want to immediately write this work off as a failure for its untidy nature. Especially in light of the insightful moments sprinkled throughout the text, the abrupt end (with rather disappointing summaries for the characters I'd just become interested in) gives me pause, encourages me to look back and re-examine what the novel is about. Except that I feel that I should already know long before the last chapter.
Another note of contention is something I do in my own writing: address the reader as the author, 2nd person, extra-diagetic, a stepping away from the narrative at hand to explain . . . something writing faculty everywhere would tell you is a mark of an amateur, craftlessness. I'm not so sure I'm willing to go that far; these "missteps" often included ponderous sentiments that I rather enjoyed thinking about, but then again Smith is preaching to the choir to me. I'm sure I'd be less forgiving if I didn't feel cynical about the way culture constructs racial identity.

All in all despite what seems to be just a scattering of events colored by a wide variety of character perspectives, I still recommend the read solely because of its examination of the perpetuation of our beliefs about culture, progress, and the "other."(less)

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Aug 26, 2007

Ellen rated it

Shelves: fiction

I enjoyed this book, despite being mildly repulsed by the first couple chapters. Generally, I don't like books where I don't like any of the characters, and this book was full of unlikable characters. Somehow, though, Zadie Smith still managed to make them sympathetic. The overall tone of the book was mocking, so at least I felt in league with the narrator in finding the characters' thoughts and actions ridiculous. But at the same time, I could identify with characters who make stupid decisi...more

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Jun 24, 2007

yana rated it

· review of another edition

so disappointing.
i started out with very high hopes, had been reading a lot of old and manly novels and was very much in the mood to read something by a contemporary female author. i was living in san francisco and kept seeing this book in the hands of strangers everywhere i went - on the BART, on the light rail, in the park, etc.. although initially turned off by the glowing reviews (i tend to be suspicious of books raving about the next new young protege who writes better than your mama...more

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Apr 24, 2007

Jennifer rated it

Recommends it for: Oprah-Club types

This one was hard to judge. I enjoyed the book...mostly. Smith seemed to be just dripping in ideas, and it appears that she tried to fit most of them in her first novel. There are parallels drawn between cross-pollination of plants and genetic engineering, parallels between the lives of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters (though each offspring believes the parents are revolting and each parent thinks their children as rebellious), of history and past and future. Smith jerks back...more

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Oct 25, 2007

thos. rated it

i picked this up when i was living in manhattan, trying to keep up a trendy appearance on the subway. though it is one of a multitude of those cultural-fish-out-of-water stories that have grown so popular since about 2001, this one is supposed to have extra sass, because it is written by a british woman who is attractive (from what i've heard about her other book on beauty; i have never seen her).

anyway, this book became particularly annoying when she started talking about tank co...more

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Jun 02, 2007

Nicole rated it

I read this a few years ago after reading about how good it is, and to this day I'm the only person I know that didn't really enjoy it at all. I read the whole thing on a plane ride to California, and I think it contributed to my jet lag because it was such a disappointment. Maybe I'll give it another try sometime, because people still tell me how good it is, but the whole thing left such a bitter taste in my mouth. For me, every sentence seemed to scream "I am important! You are suppos...more

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Jun 07, 2008

Jasmine Star rated it

I loved this book, at times i was laughing out loud. There are just so many layers to her wriing...she writes plainly, but intelligently, and it is full of humor and spunk, Her cultural isights are amazing...i swore she was talking about me at one point...and it was nice the way she included smidgens of dialect and superstition from 3 different cultures, with such depth! I would totally reccommend this book. Josh you were so right!

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Jul 03, 2008

Angelique rated it

I finally finished this book...it felt like it took forever. For the life of me, I just couldn't force myself to care about the characters or their stories. It had a few moments and the way the author brought the lives of characters full circle was interesting, although definitely had that "planned out" feel.

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Apr 26, 2009

David rated it

A lot of people seem to start reading this book wanting to like it, but then find they don't. I didn't start off with any intentions but I did like it when I started reading. However as with those people I found I couldn't like it in the end. It starts off being quite a funny description of stereotypical lives of people from different cultures thrown together in London. Then it seems to lose its way in little sub-stories which one assumes are meant to give some kind of depth to the characters bu...more

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Feb 11, 2009

Mel rated it

Since this debut work, Zadie Smith has become a British darling of the literary scene. Frankly, I don't know why. This is a post-war attempt of the intersecting-storylines-concept of "Crash," with the nonsensical scientific jargon of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Granted, there are two notably funny scenes, where someone dies after slipping on hair rollers at the salon, and banging their head on the shampoo bowl. There's also the humorous Dad of the twins, who protests most...more

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May 04, 2011

Karen rated it

Shelves: audio-book, fiction

TL;DR.

Okay, so I did finish this one, but it was not easy. The problem with audio books is that there isn't a satisfying way to skim when you lose interest in a section. So you can skip a few tracks and hope you chose well, or you can zone out and come back when you've decided what to make for dinner.

Anyway, this book has a lot to offer: interesting characters, sharp dialogue, and some hilarious scenes. Two that come to mind: a woman who refuses to speak directly to her ...more

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Jan 09, 2009

Carol rated it

It is an ambitious book spanning generations and a variety of immigrant cultures that populate London. We found the book to be laugh out loud funny at points and thought the writing was very clever. The close friendship of Archie and Samad, which started in World War II, when they were both fighting for the Allies, was heart of the story. Archie was a typical British working class man and Samad was a Muslim Bengali from Pakistan. Archie married a daughter of a Jehovah's Witness from Jamaica...more

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Dec 12, 2008

Amy rated it

I am torn between giving this book a rating of "it was okay"/"I liked it". I wanted to like this book more than I actually did; I definitely enjoyed "On Beauty" more. I found the style inconsistent and the way she jumped her focus from character to character resulted in my not sympathizing with any of them. My favorite section (and probably the reason that I chose three stars instead of two) was the one which focused on Irie, the young, mixed daughter of one of ...more

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Dec 01, 2008

Tara rated it

Shelves: 1001-before-i-die

Smith strikes me as a writer who is probably better in the short story format. Her chapters are rich, lush vignettes that are so close to being stand-alone stories that one gets the feeling, eventually, that it is only by virtue of wrestling them all into the framework of the same story that they even tenuously hang together. Her characters are broadly and well-developed, but their lives and interactions are so diverse that there's no room for the reader to project a desire or viewpoint onto t...more

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Aug 17, 2008

Michele rated it

First off, wow! I'm pretty impressed by the writing in this novel. While there may be a few rough edges as far as plotting and characterization go, the actual writing is very well done. Wish I could write like that.

Zadie Smith's novel begins with an attempted suicide, and although the sensation wanes shortly thereafter and doesn't rise again until the very end, the story is so well told that the characters take over and the plot becomes less important in the middle of the story.

...moreFirst off, wow! I'm pretty impressed by the writing in this novel. While there may be a few rough edges as far as plotting and characterization go, the actual writing is very well done. Wish I could write like that.

Zadie Smith's novel begins with an attempted suicide, and although the sensation wanes shortly thereafter and doesn't rise again until the very end, the story is so well told that the characters take over and the plot becomes less important in the middle of the story.

*Begin Spoiler*
The text is divided into four sections based on some of the main characters: Archie 1974, 1945; Samad 1984, 1857; Irie 1990, 1907; and Magid, Millat and Marcus 1992, 1997. The story begins with Archibald Jones sitting is his car preparing to die of carbon monoxide poisoning but being prevented by a shopkeeper who shooes him away. He meets his future wife Clara, a second generation Carribean immigrant, daughter of a Jehovah's Witness named Hortense who was born during the Jamaican earthquake of 1907.

The narrative then tells of the friendship that sprung up between Archie and Samad Miah Iqbal, during WWII when their tank broke down in a Bulgarian village. Samad talked Archie into killing a French spy, Dr. Marc-Pierre Perret, who they discovered there. The two men went home - Archie to a first marriage that failed, and Samad, to marry his wife Alsana in an arranged marriage. We learn that Archie has a daughter Irie and Samad twin sons Magid and Millat during the same year.

The children grow up in North London with Irie experimenting with how to rid herself of her curly hair and Samad sending off Magid to the old country to make him more religious (he can't afford to send both sons) in an attempt to keeping him from becoming Westernized. As they grow, Millat has a penchant for trouble, but eventually joins a radical islamic group: Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation (KEVIN), though he has difficulty adhering to some of the tenets. Magid returns to London an atheist intending to pursue a law degree. The twins and Irie have meanwhile met the Chalfens - Marcus, the father, is creating a genetically programmed oncomouse, Joyce writes about botany and tries to nurture everyone around her, and their four sons, one of whom, Josh, becomes disillusioned with "Chalfenism", the family's own egocentric belief in the rightness of the rationality and forthrightness, and joins a radical animal rights group: Fighting Animal Torture and Exploitation (FATE) because he's obsessed with the group leader's wife.

Irie, in a fit of anger/angst, sleeps with Millat and then Magid in the same day. At the end of the novel, we find she is pregnant but doesn't know by whom, and of course a DNA test won't be able to tell the difference. Everyone comes together at a press conference Dec. 31, 1992, when the oncomouse is revealed; KEVIN and FATE to disrupt the proceedings, Hortense and her Witnesses to spread the word about the end of the world, and the Iqbals and Joneses to hear the announcement and be with their children. Millat intends to shoot Chalfens, but shoots Archie instead, who realizes what he is about to do and blocks the shot at the same time as both he and Samad realize that Marcus Chalfens mentor is Dr. Perrot, who Archie did not kill back in 1945.

*End Spoiler*

The text makes commentary on the nature of families, history, memory, genetic engineering and science, while pulling it all together in one final confrontation.

It's a fascinating story about the immigrant experience, the cross-generational conflict that affects immigrant families, and the desire to find a place where you belong. The anxiety of all adolescence is to find your niche, but when you are trying to define your ethnic identity at the same time, it gets even harder, something this book does a pretty good job of starting to describe. And the bits about genetic engineering and Samad's obsession with history certainly add to the overall problem of identity formation (in particular, national identity formation) that's treated in the book. I'm glad the book club read this, even though I'm also going to put it on my contemporary brit lit list as well.

I know I'll be looking forward to her next book.

I have to add this comment from a book club member. "Reading White Teeth was a bit like eating your vegetables. You know they're good for you". Interpret as you will.(less)

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Jun 29, 2009

Duncan rated it

Recommends it for: yo' momma

Shelves: contemporary, problematic, keeping-up-appearances

Dear Multi-generational immigrant fiction--
I have difficulty with you. I can understand the need for continuity, a sense of connection with the past, but all I can see with you is a target audience of middle aged white, (or any variation therein-twinkie, hoho, what have you) liberal women. Same goes for Middlesex, and Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes (not sorry I didn't finish you). Again, flash to mom killing these sorts of movies on the television. Flash again to mom laying generat...more

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May 30, 2009

Sunil rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: reviews, favorites

It can't get any more post-modern than this; a pinnacle of post-modern literature, White Teeth, written in the winter of 20th century is an Hegelian synthesis of sorts. It has come to be the symbol of the contemporary fragmented world - an offspring of the marriage between the inescapable past ( an empire there was, a distant cold war and drifting faintness of World Wars) and the promise of future ( the dynamics of economic politics, pro-labour climate, a recently forged EU, growing environme...more

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Jul 18, 2007

Mark rated it

Recommends it for: fans of good fun fiction

Embrace your Inner Outcast!

Ever feel like something about you just doesn't quite fit in to the bigger picture of life that surrounds you? If so, pick up Zadie Smith's wonderful novel "White Teeth". Every single main character in the book is a well developed study of an inward focused outcast. The way the author strings these warped pearls of dysfunction into a funny, absorbing tale of life is laudable.

The outrageous beginnings of each character's plot line make...more

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Jul 03, 2007

Kim rated it

Shelves: fiction

This book is highly entertaining. It is the intergenerational story of finding identity in a hostile environment. What makes this book unique however, is that it is a sort of dissection of the ways in which we construct our identities, and the tools that we use to do so. It is less important almost, the identity constructed in the end or along the way; the journey is what matters, and the weight of history during the journey. This book contains some of the greatest charcter development I've read...more

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Jun 24, 2007

Andrew rated it

Recommends it for: those interested in colonial studies and britain today

I actually don't remember a whole lot of this book, except that it's coming back to me now. Actually it's a lot like a Stephen Frears movie, the title of which doesn't come immediately to mind. He does a lot of movies about class and race relations in Britain, mostly pretty fascinating stuff. But as I recall, Zadie Smith's book is different in that it really seeks to develop characters as characters, not just as the product of their surroundings bound to act the way they do based on their circum...more

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About Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith (born Sadie Smith October 27, 1975) is an English novelist. To date she has written three novels, and is widely regarded as one of England's most talented young authors; in 2003, she was included on Granta's list of 20 best young authors.

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“Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.” — 30 people liked it

“If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein, and a needle, tradition is a far homelier concoction: poppy seeds ground into tea; a sweet cocoa drink laced with cocaine; the kind of thing your grandmother might have made.” — 26 people liked it

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