false 3711 39 Epic in scale and intimate in approach, <I>White Teeth</I> is a formidably ambitious debut. First novelist <i>Zadie Smith</i> takes on race, sex, class, history, and the minefield of gender politics, and such is her wit and inventiveness that these weighty subjects seem effortlessly light. She also has an impressive geographical range, guiding the reader from Jamaica to Turkey to Bangladesh and back again. Still, the book's home base is a scrubby North London borough, where we encounter <i>Zadie Smith's</i> unlikely heroes: prevaricating Archie Jones and intemperate Samad Iqbal, who served together in the so-called Buggered Battalion during World War II. In the ensuing decades, both have gone forth and multiplied: Archie marries beautiful, bucktoothed Clara--who's on the run from her Jehovah's Witness mother--and fathers a daughter. Samad marries stroppy Alsana, who gives birth to twin sons. Here is multiculturalism in its most elemental form: "Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks." Big questions demand boldly drawn characters. <i>Zadie Smith's</i> aren't heroic, just real: warm, funny, misguided, and entirely familiar. Reading their conversations is like eavesdropping. Even a simple exchange between Alsana and Clara about their pregnancies has a comical ring of truth: "A woman has to have the private things--a husband needn't be involved in body business, in a lady's... parts." And the men, of course, have their own involvement in bodily functions: The deal was this: on January 1, 1980, like a New Year dieter who gives up cheese on the condition that he can have chocolate, Samad gave up masturbation so that he might drink. It was a deal, a business proposition, that he had made with God: Samad being the party of the first part, God being the sleeping partner. And since that day Samad had enjoyed relative spiritual peace and many a frothy Guinness with Archibald Jones; he had even developed the habit of taking his last gulp looking up at the sky like a Christian, thinking: I'm basically a good man. Not all of <I>White Teeth</I> is so amusingly carnal. The mixed blessings of assimilation, for example, are an ongoing torture for Samad as he watches his sons grow up. "They have both lost their way," he grumbles. "Strayed so far from what I had intended for them. No doubt they will both marry white women called Sheila and put me in an early grave." These classic immigrant fears--of dilution and disappearance--are no laughing matter. But in the end, they're exactly what gives <I>White Teeth</I> its lasting power and undeniable bite. 7480 12 6 2001 White Teeth total:16836|5:3998|4:6371|3:4387|2:1501|1:579| 16836 62216 22230 1599 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 3 22 false Tue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue May 01 16:50:07 -0700 2007 Sun Jul 15 21:51:07 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 3 12 false Mon Jun 16 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Jul 29 07:57:32 -0700 2007 Mon Jun 16 08:51:47 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 1 8 false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Wed Nov 14 00:32:34 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 02 22:47:00 -0800 2007 more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 2 3 false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 08 20:03:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 08 20:12:40 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 2 2 false Sun Mar 08 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sat Feb 07 23:08:43 -0800 2009 Sun Mar 08 18:47:39 -0700 2009
There just wasn't any ...more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 3 2 false Wed Feb 06 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 30 11:37:25 -0800 2008 Wed Feb 06 19:26:37 -0800 2008
That being said, despite the wonderfully poignant moments that expose the complications interracial relations in London, the book felt very scattered. Divided ...more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 4 2 false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Aug 07 08:11:29 -0700 2007 Sun Aug 26 13:16:38 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4207 0140297782 9780140297782 234 32 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165402786m/4207.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4207.White_Teeth 4 3 false Sat Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Tue Jul 03 11:17:44 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 03 11:33:26 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4207 0140297782 9780140297782 234 32 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165402786m/4207.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4207.White_Teeth 2 2 false Mon Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004 Sun Jun 24 07:04:23 -0700 2007 Sun Jun 24 07:09:52 -0700 2007 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 BAR...more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 2 2 false Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue Apr 24 11:25:13 -0700 2007 Tue Apr 24 11:26:46 -0700 2007
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 ...more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 1 2 false Thu Oct 25 06:48:19 -0700 2007 Thu Oct 25 06:48:19 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 2 2 false Sat Jun 02 18:06:42 -0700 2007 Sat Jun 02 18:12:13 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 5 3 false Wed Jun 04 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Apr 19 08:53:40 -0700 2008 Sat Jun 07 11:52:42 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 2 2 false Sun May 25 07:13:05 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 03 09:36:39 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 2 1 false Sun Apr 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 06 06:23:55 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 26 05:11:13 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 1 1 false Wed Feb 11 20:16:27 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 11 20:34:54 -0800 2009
Granted, there...more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 5 2 false Wed Aug 20 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Jan 09 14:33:47 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 09 14:34:28 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 3 1 false Fri Dec 12 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 30 12:44:57 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 12 13:13:29 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 3 1 false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 30 08:24:50 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 01 22:22:23 -0800 2008 1 more...]]> 3711 0375703861 9780375703867 15272 1430 3.70 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165170624m/3711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3711.White_Teeth 5 1 false Sun Aug 17 12:28:03 -0700 2008 Sun Aug 17 12:28:03 -0700 2008
Zadie Smith's novel begins with an attempted suicide, and although the sens...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=6494942