Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #760309 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-31
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Epic in scale and intimate in approach, White Teeth is an ambitious novel. Genetics, eugenics, gender, race, class and history are the book's themes but Zadie Smith is gifted with the wit and inventiveness to make these weighty ideas seem effortlessly light.

The story travels through Jamaica, Turkey, Bangladesh and India but ends up in a scrubby North London borough, home of the book's two unlikely heroes: prevaricating Archie Jones and intemperate Samad Iqbal. They met in the Second World War, as part of a "Buggered Battalion" and have been best friends ever since. Archie marries beautiful, buck-toothed Clara, who's on the run from her Jehovah's Witness mother, and they have a daughter, Irie. Samad marries stroppy Alsana and they have twin sons: "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. Zadie Smith's aren't heroic, just real: warm, funny, misguided and entirely familiar; reading their conversations is like eavesdropping. A simple scene, Alsana and Clara chatting about their pregnancies in the park: "A woman has to have the private things--a husband needn't be involved in body business, in a lady's ... parts."

Samad's rant about his sons--"They have both lost their way. 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--acutely displays "the immigrant fears--dissolution, disappearance" but it also gets to the very heart of Samad.

White Teeth is a joy to read. It teems with life and exuberence and has enough cleverness and irreverent seriousness to give it bite. --Eithne Farry

Synopsis
In the author's words, this novel is "an attempt at a comic family epic of little England into which an explosion of ethnic colour is injected". It tells the story of three families, one indian, one white, one mixed, in North London and Oxford from World War II to now.

From the Publisher
What the reviewers have said:
"Zadie Smith's fizzing first novel is about how we all got here - from the Caribbean, from the Indian sub-continent, from the thirteenth place in a long-ago Olympic bicycle race - and about what here turned out to be. It's an astonishingly assured debut, funny and serious, and the voice has real writerly idiosyncrasy. I was delighted by WHITE TEETH, and often impressed. It has ... bite." Salman Rushdie

"A brilliantly written and hugely inspiring book - buying it should go straight to the top of your New Year's resolution list." Red Magazine, (Top three reads)

"Smith perfectly captures the angst of life in an alien culture and, despite the seriousness of her theme, she can be wickedly funny. You'll laugh out loud...the entire book is speckled with lighter manifestations of cross-culture quirks...Above all, Smith has created a cast of characters that leaps off the page and keeps you engrossed to the surprising denouement." Livewire

"WHITE TEETH is no acne-ridden teenage tragedy. Zadie Smith presses all the right buttons in modern, multicultural Britain, easily and unpreachily." Evening Standard

"Smith can write. Her novel has energy, pace, humour and fully formed characters; it is blissfully free of the introversion and self-consciousness detail that mar many first novels. Smith has stories to tell and, in the tradition of Peter Carey and Salman Rushdie, she gets on with them; the dialogue is pitch perfect, the comedy neat and underplayed." Daily Telegraph

"This is an ambitious first novel, and she pulls it off magnificently, bringing all the characters and ideas together in a farcical denouement; the weighty themes are easily and humorously handled...an outsatnding novel, refreshingly upbeat and deserving of all the attention it is getting." Evening Standard

"This is a strikingly clever and funny book with a passion for ideas, for language and for the rich tragi-comedy of life...It is her ebullient, simple prose and her generous understanding of human nature that make Zadie Smith's novel outstanding. It is not only great fun to read, but full of hope. Written by a member of a generation described by the author herself as "children with first and last names on a great collision course", the reader is encouraged to look forward, like Irie Jones, to 'a time, not far from now, when roots won't matter any more.'" Sunday Telegraph

Customer Reviews

Still laughing
I first read this book when it was released and have to say, it's one of my favourites. Smith works away from the typical attitude of authors when it comes to talking about multi-culturism... in other words she's not scared to 'offend'. The book is absolutely hilarious and my favourite from her, compared to her other books. Her characters are there to hate and love all at the same time, and her storylines full of bittersweet humour...

A definite must read... I am gutted till this day to have missed the TV adaptation of this ....

Not the best read
I have read all three of Zadie Smith's books, mainly because I wanted to know what all the hype was about. I have just finished reading White Teeth and I have suddenly got it: in White Teeth Zadie Smith tries very hard to be like Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children or Satanic Verses: the language, epic style, the flashbacks to legendary times, the numerous characters; only the magical aspect of Rushdie's first books is left out.

My own childhood was quite rich multiculturally speaking but I can't boast that it was as varied as Zadie Smith's North London. And yet I was very disappointed with how Smith actually describes the mix of cultures and heritages that Irie, Magid and Millat grow up in. She doesn't work on developing the issue and sticks to stereotypes. I don't know whether she wasn't brave enough or didn't give enough of herself.

The characters are all obviously archetypical but she left out a lot of interesting details, dwelling more on monotonous issues (more to the point: they were monotonous in the book) or people: Samad and Archie's experience in the war and Marcus' work on genetics are quite boring and long episodes. The Chalfens on the other hand, representing the ignorant, prejudiced and condescending white Europeans are a ridiculous, unrealistic and uninteresting addenda. Clara and Irie - who are the really interesting people - are nearly not developed at all.

My advice to anyone thinking of buying this book: read Midnight's Children instead. It's much more poignant and genuine. If you want books on family sagas with loads of characters, head for García Márquez. You will save yourself time and gain entertainment and enrichment.

How history works
This is the kind of book that gives multi-culturalism a good name. It isn't preachy or pius, it's just content to be profound and funny and readable. Above all it is Irie's story. Her older relatives share the big immigrant fear, disappearance, the nightmare where birthplace and belonging become meaningless accidents. But to young Irie, this feels like freedom. You can't escape your history, your shadow. But roots can be too too long, tortuous and deep, and in the end will have to be ignored and denied. Thus history progresses. All this comes as a bonus. The humour and humanity alone are worth the read.