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White Teeth

3.68 of 5 stars 3.68 · rating details · 49,745 ratings · 3,044 reviews

Zadie Smith’s dazzling debut caught critics grasping for comparisons and deciding on everyone from Charles Dickens to Salman Rushdie to John Irving and Martin Amis. But the truth is that Zadie Smith’s voice is remarkably, fluently, and altogether wonderfully her own.

At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless vet...more

Hardcover, 448 pages

Published July 11th 2000 by Random House (first published May 19th 1999)

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Nov 23, 2012 Paul rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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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Jul 15, 2007 Ben rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 dialogue and a...more 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 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 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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-surfa...more 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-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 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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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Dec 02, 2007 Dan rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 resembling other auth...more

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Apr 18, 2011 Elisa rated it 4 of 5 stars · 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 proprio colore. In cerca di...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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Jun 23, 2012 Velvetink rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Such a hard slog to get through but you know me, I hate not finishing something. Like a certain Paul Bryant I was grinding my teeth throughout - although quite often for different reasons....It had a few quotes I found worthwhile underlining, but nothing that sticks in my mind right now that I could tell you. kind of ho hum and reminds me of some whacky 70's books where anything and everything is thrown in to make it exciting. Didn't work for me, found so much of it tedious and I jumped whole pa...more

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Jul 03, 2007 Katherine M rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: british-authors

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 relations...more

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Jun 25, 2012 Jeniffer Almonte rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, reviewed

A week after finishing this incredibly charming novel, it has settled in my mind as the image of a colorful tapestry similar to those I bought when I visited South America a few years ago. The tapestries depicted a scene with many different characters interacting in some sort of communal space, like a park or a town square. If you look closely you can make out all the little stories--people getting married, buying fruit, riding their bicycle, hanging up laundry etc. When you step back again, to...more A week after finishing this incredibly charming novel, it has settled in my mind as the image of a colorful tapestry similar to those I bought when I visited South America a few years ago. The tapestries depicted a scene with many different characters interacting in some sort of communal space, like a park or a town square. If you look closely you can make out all the little stories--people getting married, buying fruit, riding their bicycle, hanging up laundry etc. When you step back again, to look at the whole picture, what you see is a whirl of colors and patterns that feels impossible to understand.

"White Teeth" is a sprawling tapestry of London. While the people in Zadie Smith's scene revolve around three families--the Jones', the Iqbals, and the Chalfens-- truly everyone that is touched by her pen gets a generously specific identity. (Even a Polish security guard, appearing for barely five lines, a few pages away from the end of the novel, gets to have a story). The plot revolves around two middle-aged friends-- Samad, a high-minded Bangladeshi waiter and Archie, a nondescript paper folder--who marry younger women and then raise children in Willesden, a working class suburb. Over the next two decades the intimacy between these men extends to their wives and children; the closeness of the two families becomes the most enduring relationship of the novel, (even with the intrusion of the Chalfens, who march in halfway and cause havoc).

"White Teeth" is about the ways that the past remains ever relevant, the claims that immigrants can make on Britishness (and that Britishness can make on immigrants), and about the smallness of London, the ways that different people are forced to interact and react to each other. Smith peoples her tapestry with a cast of Muslims, Bangladeshis, lapsed Jehovahs witnessess, devout Jehovahs witnesses, staunch atheists, Jewish intellectuals, animal rights activists, Jamaicans, lesbians, potheads, old racists and so on and so forth. She draws on pop culture and high-brow culture--invoking the jealousy of Shakespeare's Iago on one page, the swagger of mafia movies on the next. And what's really fun is the energy with which she shows off not only that cultural knowledge, not only that skill (and affection) for words, but also her understanding of different subgroups of Londoners.

Here is her description of a group of Muslim teens:

"Their ethos, their manifesto, if it could be called that, was equally a hybrid thing: Allah featured, but more as a collective big brother than a supreme being, a hard-as-fuck geezer who would fight in their corner if necessary; kung fu and the works of Bruce Lee were also central to the philosophy....but mainly their mission was to put the Invincible back in Indian, the Bad-aaaaass back in Bengali, the P-Funk back in Pakistani."

This fluent way of articulating how a group of non-white, working-class teens would interpret Islam is characteristic of her sensitivity to the ways that culture and religion are used in the ways that are most useful. Beyond the clever plot and the clever writing, these kinds of observations, this smart commentary on the immigrant experience was so much of what I really appreaciated about "White Teeth".

What left the biggest impression of this book was the great FUN that it must have been to write it. Truly. That joy translates onto every page and it makes "White Teeth" a joy to read. (less)

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Mar 08, 2009 Lizzie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, sold-to-the-strand, unpopular-opinions, 1001-books

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 listless instead of...more

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Apr 15, 2011 Leo rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bestest

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 turning entirely seri...more

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Feb 06, 2008 Krys rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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, so the lat...more 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, 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 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 decisions,...more

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Jun 24, 2007 yana rated it 2 of 5 stars · 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 at th...more

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Apr 24, 2007 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition 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 and forth b...more

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Oct 25, 2007 thos. rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 combat in ww2; i...more

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Jun 02, 2007 Nicole rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 supposed to enj...more

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Apr 09, 2013 Margitte rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel-community-stories

Phew, I was exhausted after finishing this book.
Faith, race, gender, history, and culture in three North London families are turned upside down, questioned, dissected and turned into a tragic comedy by Zadie Smith.

Samad Iqbal and his wife Alsana, the original Benghali immigrants, often sort their differences out in some feisty backyard wrestling matches while their two twin sons, Magid and Millat, the second generation immigrants, run haywire in their confusion about being British as their mom w...more

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Jun 07, 2008 Jasmine Star rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 everything the boys'...more

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Jun 17, 2013 Erin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

Even though it took me exactly a month to read, the time I spent reading this book isn't an accurate representation of how engaging I found the story. February was a rough month - I read this book almost entirely on the bus, which contributed to the pace at which I crawled through it. It felt right somehow, reading a book about a living, evolving, gradually changing city on public transportation, moving at a snail's pace.

I more than understand why this book receives the acclaim it does, and it d...more Even though it took me exactly a month to read, the time I spent reading this book isn't an accurate representation of how engaging I found the story. February was a rough month - I read this book almost entirely on the bus, which contributed to the pace at which I crawled through it. It felt right somehow, reading a book about a living, evolving, gradually changing city on public transportation, moving at a snail's pace.

I more than understand why this book receives the acclaim it does, and it deserves it. The narrative is flawless, if that's possible.

I have a tendency to over-rate books, but I loved this.

The story illustrates the difficulty and conundrum of complete assimilation for immigrants. By weaving the present narrative through past anecdotes, Smith demonstrates the ways in which the characters can never completely leave their past, or their cultural backgrounds, behind. I loved the way the teeth theme ran subtly through the book. Smith uses the metaphor of a root canal to closely examine and dissect the main characters' histories and parts of their story that end up contributing to their present personalities. I like how teeth are used as a connecting element between all the characters, to emphasize their "roots," and to demonstrate that you even if you save the root, you can't always save the tooth - as hard as the characters try to preserve their cultural differences and return to their roots, it ends up causing most of the conflict and strife in their lives.

Like all Smith's stories, this one also focuses on accidents, coincidence and chance. Often she makes the point that, "You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.” As the story progresses, you can clearly see the consequences of the two main characters' choices, philosophies and values on their families and their futures. Archie is a man who is accidentally good, accidentally happy - in contrast to his friend Samad, who almost refuses to be content. The differences between the two men and the way it informs their interactions throughout their friendship spawns much of the conflict and consequently, the coincidences, that take place in the novel. As a result, I found a lot of the major plot twists a little predictable, but the writing was so beautiful that it in no way inhibited my enjoyment of the story.

Smith is able to brilliantly capture social issues and large cultural events through the lenses of individuals. Honestly, I don't often read current fiction that I think needs to be taught. This is one of those stories. It's a modern look at the effects of colonialism, the impact of assimilation and a commentary on how religion influences it, and the importance of a diverse culture to a society that is instructive on how to write, and also on how to think about others.(less)

1 like · like · see review

May 04, 2011 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 husband for eight years,...more

3 likes · like · see review

Jul 12, 2010 Cynthia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: the-list

Zadie Smith wrote this when she was 24. Impressive. I enjoyed the characters of Archie and Samad and their lengthy/unlikely friendship.

I loved Samad's twins, Millat and Magid, but then I nearly always love twins in a novel. Archie's daughter Irie is a great character provides the glue to the rest of the story.

Archie and Samad's wives are less developed characters. Alsana is a pistol and I would have liked to know more about her. (page 197:) "'Everyone has to be taught a lesson,' Alsana had said,...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 09, 2009 Carol rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 and...more

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Dec 12, 2008 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 the original characters. I think s...more

2 likes · like · see review

Dec 01, 2008 Tara rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 the...more

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Aug 17, 2008 Michele rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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.

*Begin Spoiler*
Th...more 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.

*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)

2 likes · like · see review

Jun 29, 2009 Duncan rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition 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 generations of gu...more

6 likes · like · see review

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About Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith (born Sadie Smith October 27, 1975) is an English novelist. To date she has written four 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.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zadie_Smith

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“It's a funny thing about the modern world. You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, "Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He didn't love me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me." Now, how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll---then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.” — 237 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.” — 49 people liked it

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