White Teeth: A Novel
by Zadie Smith
|
List Price: Our Price: $6.93 You Save: $9.02 (57%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of White Teeth: A Novel
Book Review: Stunning First Novel From a Brilliant Writer
Summary: 5 Stars
It was in the last year of the Second World War, while serving together as part of a tank crew, that Archie Jones met Samad Iqbal. What resulted is a powerful but wacky bond between the hapless but easy going Englishman and the better educated, but always underemployed and bitter, Bengali Muslim. This close friendship also brought together their wives: Alsana, who was promised by her family at birth to marry Samad, and Clara, an extremely beautiful Jamaican girl from a Jehovah's Witness family, whose one flaw is that she has no upper front teeth. 18 years old Clara married the much older Archie soon after meeting the middle-aged man at a hippie New Year's Eve party she was attending. Archie crashed the party after deciding not to go through with a suicide over his failed marriage to his Italian warbride.
Naturally affected by the conflictive and dysfunctional marriages of these two couples are their children. Irie, the only child of Archie and Clara, is an intelligent and pretty girl, unfortunately insecure not only about her weight but also for the kinky hair she's inherited from her black mother. Irie has long been infatuated with one of Samad's twin sons, Millat, who has always been attracted to white women with long straight hair. Millat and his twin, Magid, are handsome like their father. Samad, however, was hypocritically displeased over the way the boys were growing up in 1970s Britain. Whereas Samad has always been joined at the hip of his English best friend (with whom he indulges in drink and an occasional dish of pork), and, at the time, was having an affair with his sons' red-headed English music teacher, he wanted his sons to be brought up as good Muslims, praying five times a day, eating halal food and all the rest. His solution was to send them to be raised in his native Bangladesh. Arranging this behind his wife's back, he found that he could afford to send only one of the boys. He chose the more intellectually gifted, and older by two minutes, Magid. Ironically it is this son who will grow into an atheist, loving all things English, while Millat, who remained behind in the UK, will eventually become involved with a radical Islamist group. Adding more into this already bizarre interracial and multicultural mix, Irie and Millat bring their fellow student, Joshua Chalfen, and his pretentiously intellectual, secular Jewish family --a brood that is overbearing and more dysfunctional than either the Joneses or the Iqbals could ever be-- into everyone's lives.
All parties will eventually clash over the genetic engineering experiments of Josh Chalfen's father. Clara's Jehovah's Witness mother and ex-boyfriend, Millat's radical Muslim organization, all agree on one thing only: that Professor Chalfen is evil incarnate. Even his son Josh, who has become involved with a fanatical animal rights group, repudiates both him and his work. Only Magid, returning to his beloved England, is enamored with Professor Chalfen and his research.
Zadie Smith was only 24 when she wrote WHITE TEETH. Herself the child of a black mother and white father, Smith had based much of the novel's storyline and characters from her own life's experiences (Interestlingly, the characters of Magid and Millat are based on real-life brothers Zia and Jimmi Rahman, Zia being the ex-boyfriend of writer Claire Berlinski [LOOSE LIPS, MENACE IN EUROPE]). Along with a knack for fueling the narrative, Smith also possesses that rare talent for putting the conversational --with all of its strange vernaculars and colloquialisms-- to print. The characters who populate her story, despite their wildest eccentricities and convoluted personalites, are realistic and attractive, easily provoking sympathy. WHITE TEETH is one of the few books that a reader hates to put down and can't wait to pick up again with any bit of free time he or she gets.
There are, however, two things that I didn't like about WHITE TEETH: One is the way that Smith downplayed the racial tensions and often violent confrontations between the Indian and black immigrants and the white working class community in 1960s-1980s Britain. After all, at the time Samad is supposed to have moved to the UK (1975), so-called "Paki bashing" was still a common, late night pastime for many of England's white youth subcultures ('skinheads,' 'bootboys,' and other football hooligans, as well as the perrenial 'teddy boys'). The children, growing up in early-to-mid '80s London, not once encountered anything of the skinhead resurgence of that time, or the rise in popularity amongst white youth for the fascistic National Front or British Movement organizations. The Riots of 1981, which plagued the British Isles for weeks, aren't even mentioned. The other thing that displeased me about the story was the ending. I agree some of the other reviewers here that it did seem rushed.
Book Review: Ham Sandwhich on Rye
Summary: 3 Stars
In the novel White Teeth, Zadie Smith tackled a very difficult task of incorporating comedy into a very serious cultural clash. The booked is centered upon its two pillars, the egotistical, patronizing, pretentious, and condescending Samad Miah Iqbal and the soft spoken, non-confrontational, modest yet suicidal Archibald Jones. The two men come from completely different cultures, Samad being a Bengali Muslim, and Archie being a British Christian. As Samad and Archie go from the British Royal Military to north London their friendship stays strong. They each have their own complicated families which serve as the main characters in the book. Samad marries the over-bearing, opinionated, and out-spoken Alsana. They have identical twins Magid and Millat, who are both the same person yet so very opposite its increadible. Archie marries the beautiful, rebellious, and toothless Clara Bowden, a Jamaican immigrant and daughter of a die-hard and somewhat hysterical Jehovah's Witness, Hortense Bowden. Together, Archie and Clara have a daughter, Irie, a voluptuous, opinionated, and averagely intelligent girl.The beginning of the story works on bringing the characters together. It is careening with oddities and some of the most awkward matches and situations possible. Once both of the families are clearly established, the true genius of the book comes to light. Each character is developed into a complex jumble of emotion, conflict, love, and rebellion. Samad ships his eldest by two minutes and better son, Magid back to Bangladesh to become a religious profit gifted with the light of Allah. In doing so he created an enemy of Alsana until he returned. There second son, Millat, develops into a rebel of sorts. All of the girls are obsessed with him, he smokes pot incessantly, and he leads a gang of rough riders feared and respected throughout the youth of North London. As the development of his two sons strays further and further from what he intended, Samad believes himself to be a cursed Muslim and decides to devote himself to Allah forever. Archie continues in his non confrontational style for the whole book, while Irie and Clara constantly clash about nearly every issue that comes up. The families, alone and by themselves have enough issues to make a shrinks career. They then run into each other and even another family, the Chalfens, to create even more friendship, love, conflict, turmoil, and cultural clashing.
The book unfortunately falls off a bit in my mind after of the conflict, drama, and commotion is clearly established. Smith rushes her characters into new developments completely inconsistent with their previously described and wonderfully thought out characters. Samad goes from powerful and handsome, to feeble and insignificant. Alsana then goes from a subservient wife to a spouse abusing wench worthy of any husband's fears. Millat goes from a popular leader to be followed, to a follower in Kevin, something that was so incongruous to his character that is really detracted from a reader's connection with him. These inconsistencies did not ruin the story, but they attacked Smiths credibility, this being a story based in the realm of reality. The only character that stayed consistent was Archie, though even he was a hard to gauge. We saw in the first seen of the book, his attempted suicide, and from that point on he is a submissive vegetable who offers a gentle opinion here and there. While the story holds up, its characters have difficulty doing so.
Smith's trend of factional evolution of the characters was the strongest metaphor throughout the story. It began with Hortense Bowden and Ryan Topps committing their lives to Jehovah's Witness church. Then Millat went to KEVIN to act as a fundamentalist follower of some ridiculous approach on Islam. Then Joshua joined FATE mainly out of rebellion to his father. The message in all of this seemed to say that people have a need to associate with that seems to them as an important endeavor, their time has to be worth something. In assuring this for themselves, they often make decisions that would normally never even be considered. While the messages are consistent, once again, it is not consistent with the story that Smith conjured in the opening hundred and fifty pages of the book.
In all, this was a very interesting book with many twists and turns, some expected and some completely curve balled. I became easy at some points to connect and at others to be completely detached. When reading it, keep an open mind and don't search to hard for explanations and reasoning that you think you missed, chances are it isn't there. If you just move with the motion of the book it's an enjoyable read that will interestingly leave you wanting more (possibly because the ending was dismal and you need a better sense of closure).
Book Review: The Twinning of Multiculturalism and Mundanity
Summary: 4 Stars
The most striking characteristic about Zadie Smith's "White Teeth" is its musicality, a rhythm assembled from the cacophonic mundanity of multicultural London. And besides the musicality there are the multiplying literary allusions you would expect from a young Cambridge English graduate. The style and characters owe a great deal to Salman Rushdie, and there are hints and traces of "A Confederacy of Dunces," "The World According to Garp," and other first or only novels that are dynamic and exciting because the writer is so immature and innocent. "White Teeth" is a brilliant debut, but because Ms. Smith invests so much of herself and her world into it we need to wonder if she is capable of something greater than this.
The novel is unabashedly and unashamedly autobiographical, but the young clever writer seeks to disguise and dissemble. We think that Zadie Smith's fictional self is Irie Jones, daughter of an uneven but quiet marriage between middle-aged Archie Jones and an adolescent Jamaican former Jehovah's Witness. But because Irie is in the background so much, and we actually read so little about her family I suspect that Zadie Smith's true self and family are scattered into other characters and families.
Indeed, two other families take center stage. There is the noisy fiesty Iqbal clan: the parents decide critical family issues through fistfights, and when it comes to the most critical issue of them all -- how to save at least one son from the mundane evils of British society -- the worldly yet provincial Samad Iqbal must kidnap his own son in order to send him back to Bangledesh. The result is that, in refusing to change his stubborn Muslim ways, he loses both of his sons, who are in fact twins: Millat, the twin who stays in London, throws himself into sexual debauchery before becoming an Islamic fundamentalist, Magid, the other twin who grows up in Bangladesh, becomes more English than the English, and becomes a science fanatic. Then there is the Chalfen clan, who are a universe onto themselves. The brilliant and self-absorbed Marcus Chalfen hopes to unlock human perfection and salvation through his genetic research, and his equally brilliant and self-absorbed wife seeks to nurture children as she would nurture her plants. Their son Joshua rebels against everything by joining a fanatical animal rights group that wants to destroy Marcus's research.
The book is about the contradictions and paradoxes in the individuals in a multicultural society. Samad Iqbal is handsome, articulate, and intelligent, yet works as a waiter in an Indian restaurant whose ultimate home is his Quran. Marcus Chalfen is highly educated and worldly, yet has devoted his career to continuing the work pioneered by the Nazis -- and indeed his mentor is a Nazi. The beautiful son has all the world's women at his feet yet chooses to deny everything and seek salvation in fanatical Islam, and the studious son who has grown up in a place of abysmal poverty caused partly by British colonialism chooses to place his faith a British man he's never met. And Irie, who lusts after one and hates another, has sex with both, gets pregnant, and will never know who the father is. Multiculturalism is just messy, ugly, and noisy. And that's why it ultimately drives people to fanaticism and extremes.
The writing is elegant and polished for a writer so young, the book moves along at a nice clip, and there are some hilarious moments in the book (when Joyce Chalfen gives a plant to a student and tells him to treat it as his father had treated him the student waters it with Pepsi and sits it in front of the TV). The ending is a complete disappointment, and it's such a convoluted cleverness as to be obvious: the ending is supposed to tie back to the beginning, but it doesn't, and all that's left is one big mess. The mundanity of multiculturalism is just one mess that no one can possibly hope to clean up, after all.
Book Review: Too Unique to Pass Up [T]
Summary: 5 Stars
Blending numerous unique and eclectic characters into British late-20th century society, the author creates a whirlwind finale where the different people with different perspectives appear to all agree or disagree for reasons to which none of the others can condone.
Half Jewish/half-not-Jewish Joshua Chalfen seems an oddity - but he is actually the most normal of the most normal British. His peers include 3/8th's Jamaican black and 5/8th-not, Irie Jones, whose mother leaves the JW teachings in her teens to fall into the arms of Archie Jones, a simple man who is decades her senior, and someone much less tall. Archie's WW II buddy Samad Iqbal marries someone of his color and nation and age, and fathers a child (actually twins) almost simultaneously with best friend Archie.
We then fast forward to the children being teenagers, and how they conflict with their parents who are anything but Ozzie and Harriet - or the British equivalent of the same. In turn, everything basically does not come out as planned. Each person's life ends up more twisted and F%$#ed (an often used term in the book) up than anyone could or did envision.
But, resounding above the great characteratures of these people is the dialogue. Rich and diverse. Jamaican patois of Hortense Bowden (grandmother to Irie) and her daughter Clara contrast beautifully to Archie's middle class simplicity and the Bengali wit of Samad and Samad's wife, Alana. Mixing the Bengali dialect of Samad and his often stilted use of the English language with the British bred good-for-nothing son, Millar, and Bengal-raised Magi. Samad kidnaps Maid as a preteen and sends him to Bengal to prohibit him from being polluted by western weaknesses (as well as his pimping brother) and bestow upon him the fundamental and righteous Muslim ways, Samad's experiment fails. He learns, "No one is more British than the Indians. And, no one is more Indian and the British."
It is another experiment which is the focus of the last half of the book. Joshua, whose parents would make any teenager cringe, have a father making the super mouse called "Future mouse" - something perhaps greater than Mickey Mouse. Plugged with scientific engineering, the mouse has a life span of ten years, unheard of for rodents. Touching upon God's work infuriates many: Clara's JW mother Hortense, the Muslims of Millar (Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation (or KEVIN)), the Muslim Samad, and hippies Joely and Crispin (Eco-terrorist-like radicals). Their respective reactions are not as funny as one may desire.
The beginning and end of the book deliver a mixture of humor not dissimilar to the characters - instead of mixing black with white, the beginning and end mix macabre with humor. Death, to this reader, is not a topic of humor. My prejudice welcomes such attempts as heartily as a comedy about the holocaust. But, at times it can work. "Springtime for Hitler" and the "Producers, The" succeeded, and so does this novel.
In between the bizarre story lies great introspective observation by the author. With witticisms that even Archie's and Samad's bartender could not bestow, she describes many of the characters' actions in a hip-but-insightful manner. These "extras" made the novel much more than a story told by a narrator. These additions made the book a novel of merit - something which many other reviewers have agreed exists.
If you can leap past personal prejudices - something I had to do - and allow the book to proceed, you will be pleased to have made the effort.
Book Review: One of my (many) favorite books
Summary: 5 Stars
I've never written an Amazon review before, but was finally moved to do so by reading a preceding review in which the reviewer said:"I couldn't stand any of the characters; I didn't empathize with them. Perhaps this is because I am a white American, far removed from the London Zadie Smith writes of, but I doubt it. I don't think that she (the writer) likes any of her characters, except for perhaps Irie, the only character that actually develops during the course of the novel. At one point early in the book, I thought to myself that Zadie Smith must be a rather mean person to describe so many people so hatefully."
I wonder whether this reader and I read the same book.
I too am white and American, and that made the book especially important, interesting and educational for me.
I felt it was a valuable privilege to read the obviously honestly told, and deeply felt, experience of a person so different from me as Zadie Smith.
I am also grateful she still has the hope and passion to make the effort to tell it, since many nonwhites have given up trying to talk about the subjects of which Smith writes, at least to a mixed-race audience.
One of the things that most delighted and impressed me about this book was what I experienced as Smith's deep compassion, which I believe she extended to almost all her characters, across color, culture, gender, sexual orientation and religion.
The only characters I recall her having treated without compassion were-- perhaps not coincidentally-- also probably the most egregious hypocrites in the book.
I do see this as a flaw, but certainly not enough of one to significantly diminish my overall good opinion of, and pleasure in reading, the book.
Reading this book has deepened my understanding of people different from me in ways Zadie Smith's characters are different; it made my understanding more visceral, and rooted it more deeply in specifics; and although I don't believe anyone not in her characters' situation can ever truly say they know what it's like to be a first or second-generation, minority non-white immigrant, I think this book has brought me another step closer. I recommend it for this reason as much as for the fun I had, and hope others will have, reading it.
Smith's writing skill made me marvel. She somehow managed to move her language and tone from high culture to pop and hop culture, from poetry to trash talk, and never break the spell.
She told a heart-breaking story of great complexity, and she told it with humor and insight into her characters and our contemporary culture that made me snort out loud with laughter more than once.
The above use of the phrase "our contemporary culture" indicates another thing I admire about Smith's book: although she's writing about London, everything important she has to say about her characters' issues, history, feelings, and cultures is piercingly relevant to what's going on worldwide, including the Americanization of the planet.
This book is, for me, one of the most shining examples of writing about urgent issues in the most entertaining way possible; of teaching without talking down; and of a brilliant writer using her experience, together with great powers of intellect and observation, to sharply expose painful truths with love.
If you like David Foster Wallace's piercing of the cultural veil, Barbara Kingsolver's compassion, V.S. Naipul's wit and perspective, Tom Wolfe's breadth and ability to see through all factions, Catch-22's revelation of social insanity through his style of writing, or Jane Austen's straight-faced revelations of hilarious absurdity, then this might turn out to be one of your favorite books, too.