White Teeth: A Novel
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Product Description
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 veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a gorgeous, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, reasonably factually gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t reasonably match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith. Set against London’s racial and cultural tapestry, venturing across the ex- empire and into the past as it barrels toward the future, White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily being.
Amazon.com Review
Epic in scale and intimate in approach, White Teeth is a formidably ambitious debut. First novelist Zadie Smith 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 municipality, where we encounter Smith’s 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 into the world and multiplied: Archie marries gorgeous, 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 crash course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks.”
Huge questions demand boldly drawn characters. Zadie Smith’s aren’t heroic, just real: warm, amusing, 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 spouse 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 loved 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 excellent man.
Not all of White Teeth 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 proposed for them. No doubt they will both marry white women called Sheila and place 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 White Teeth its lasting power and undeniable bite. –Eithne Farry
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Terrible grammar within quotations is of course fine because garbage-can characters usually speak with terrible grammar. Yet, Smith’s misplaced modifiers, mixed descriptions, and incorrect omissions of words such as the word “that” are elementary mistakes that detract from the book’s legitimacy. The writing is equivalent to that of a novice English speaker. As a replacement for of showing, Zadie Smith tells. In order to respect the reader’s intelligence, a writer must show, not tell. When the reader has a chance to utilize his ability to reflect, the plot hijacks all of his attention. Such a book engages the reader. Yet, when the writer gives the reader all of the answers by telling everywhere, she insults the reader’s intelligence and the reader falls asleep. Why should I read a book if I am told all the answers? Why should I read a writer’s work when the writer has already done all of the thinking for me? For example, the nuances of a characters actions should reveal to the reader the character’s feelings, the character’s personality, and the reasons for the character’s ways. Zadie Smith washes away any trace of a reason that I had for wanting to pay attention to the book because she answered all of persons questions in the text. The book does not demand that the reader stay present or keep his eyes open. Thus, the book is an eye-closer. 450 pages of the same lackluster pattern is even repulsive. Five-star raters of this book are low-level thinkers because they like being told the answers, and I would hesitate to heed their insights.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
…She had to read a few passages to me – not because they were incredible – rather, because they had to do with Vespa motorscooter details, and I’m a fanatic. Anyway, her facts about the Vespa, model year/speed/color, etc. are all incorrect. I know this is a minute detail but, it kind of throws the read – in this case my wife – off. Just for the record the Vespa GS was not produced for sale until 1955. Maybe she can add this to the list of edits for the next edition. By the way, my Vespa GS can go 70 MPH downhill, not a mere 22 MPH!
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Stunnin debut, darlin. Unnerving confidence for a Brit chick who`d be a no name at a rock show. Just stay off the yachts away and away from stout men with fatwas and, in principle, Elton John.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
A witty tale with an vital message. I really like this leader as a person after reading this book even though I do not know her.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
A much condensed version would have helped but still would not have been a excellent tale. The end was a disappointment and the middle laborious.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5