White Teeth

Jesus... this book. So so so good

White Teeth is a fun, interesting read. Set in London from the 1970's to 2000, this book tracks the interwoven lives of a number of characters, each with their own complicated ethnic and personal histories. Her depictions of the confusions and stresses that different immigrants and their children face are really touching. Zadie Smith also writes beautifully. There were a number of one-liners and hilariously bitter exchanges that made me laugh throughout.

A wonderfully written meditation on the histories that live within and without us that are so formative to our identities as individuals, families, and societies. Particularly interesting in context of immigration, so although the race issues here are mostly U.K.-centric, the tensions are especially poignant for Americans currently.

The end chapters dragged, and then suddenly it's the climax and the ending rushing in together and it's all over. Huh? Hmm. Okay, well, I guess that will work.

I must not be intellectual enough for this because this was the most boring and pointless book I've read in ages. It's small print so it's eternal even though it's only around 400 pages. It took me weeks to finish this, WEEKS. I 100% would have DNF'd this had it not been for the fact that it fills a prompt on my reading challenge this year.

More a 3.5 than a 4.
I expected to fall in love with this novel, the same way I did with On Beauty. But the love affair did not happen and I found myself, unfortunately, racing through the pages not because I was entranced but because I wanted to get to the end, quickly.
The core issues are that of identity and belonging - do these come with family, nationality, religion, culture, or cause? Along with these, the novel explores migration, nationalism, genetic engineering, extremism, elitism, love, activism, and a smattering of other subjects. The narrative is super-smart; you're definitely in the company of high and frank intelligence, one with plenty of wit and humour, layered faintly with condescension.
The characters are richly drawn out - there's Archibald Jones, the middle-aged white guy; his unlikely best friend Samad Iqbal, the Bangladeshi who uproots from his home country to have a better life in England; Clara Bowden, Archie's young, Jamaican wife; Alsana Begum, Samad's wife; their children Magid, Millat, and Irie; and the Chalfens, just to name a few. Their dialogue sparkles. The author takes great delight in poking fun at her characters, in whose emotions, lives, and minds we delve quite deeply but without - at least on my part - the effect of caring about them.
One critic praised the novel as being a “riot” and that is an apt word. The author throws out many threads of plots, characters, arguments, and histories, and we get this amazing weave of colour and texture. It's just that it's hard to discern the pattern in the tapestry.
This is a smart and funny novel but though my mind was stimulated and the funny bone tickled, the heartstrings remained quite untouched.

So I read this around when it first came out and then lately everyone's (okay like three people) been like, Hey Renata, have you read White Teeth? And I've been like, yeah, I know I did, but I can't remember anything about it.

Which is not a good sign, really, but I figured I should re-read it anyway. It was good, I suppose. Kind of like Salman Rushdie Light. Sometimes a little heavy-handed when dealing with race, but sometimes not. Pretty funny, and I liked the way the plot all came together at the end (though I have a bit of a weakness for deus ex machina). Probably a few years from now, though, I'll have completely forgotten the plot again.

It's never a good sign when you are reading a book and you recognize a skippable paragraph (or few). By the last section I was skipping whole pages. The writing in this book is bloated and redundant that makes me wonder how long the first draft was or if it was edited at all. And there are quite a few stylistic writing choices. The worst one for me was persistently repeating what's already been said. This got really old really quickly. Why use one word when three would make you look stylish.

When you have 10+ main characters then none of them are given a chance to rise above the rest. Some characters even get introduced in last third of the book! and are given equal importance as the characters we've been following all along. Following is a strong word. You start a chapter with one character, get their back story and then you move on. In the next chapter a secondary character from the previous chapter gets the spotlight and the cycle continues to no end.

If reading pointless back stories about each (and every) character hasn't made you tear this book up then the lack of plot will surely push you over that ledge. It's supposed to be a multigenerational time-hopping story that spans decades. Story is also a strong word here because, other than the fact these people live with (or near) each other, there is no narrative string tying them together. Even though the author will make sure to tell you where each (and every) character has been, you don't get satisfaction of knowing where any of them are going. They are just thrown into random situations reminiscent of TV sitcoms and their stories serve more as a commentary about the life of (first and second generation) immigrants, rather than building blocks of a coherent storyline.

There is an attempt, at the very end, to merge each individual story into a crescendo but it's done clumsily and comes off as too little too late. By that point I just wanted the story to be over and couldn't care about the last-minute twist the author pulled out of her ass.

I enjoyed reading this book, Zadie Smith is a very entertaining writer. However, sometimes it felt like I was being written “at” if that makes any sense, but I also don't know if that's just something of a feature of English social novels™. 

I very much enjoyed all the sorts of irony in the book, particularly with the faithless-religious Samad and the not-so-religious but very full-of-faith Archie. I found all the characters endearing despite their flaws, except the Chalfens, who are my least favorite characters I've ever read about in my entire life (joking, slightly).

The multigenerational epic that is as much about the history and culture of the country—or in this case, Commonwealth—the main characters hail from as it is about the main characters themselves is one of my favourite genres of literary fiction. But even if I hadn't known that Smith was, in terms of first-time authors of international bestsellers, very young when she wrote “White Teeth,” it would have become very obvious very quickly. Because in addition to having been very young, she's also obviously very brilliant. And much of “White Teeth” reads like a young, brilliant person still feeling like they have to prove how brilliant they are. Every sentence is packed with incisive cultural or psychological observations, informed by a deep knowledge of history, science, and religion, all delivered with a wry, ironic wit. It can all be a bit exhausting at times!

Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with “White Teeth,” and I'm particularly looking forward to reading her later works. Because having proven her brilliance, my hope is that she will have found a more confident, grounded voice later on.

3.5–Rounded for Goodreads, rounded down because ... I predict I'll need some headroom for Smith‘s later novels!

“The enormous adrenaline rush that sprang from this particular outburst surged through Irie's body, increased her heart-beat to a gallop and tickled the nerve ends of her unborn child, for Irie was eight weeks pregnant and she knew it.”