White Teeth: A Novel
by Zadie Smith
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Book Reviews of White Teeth: A Novel
Book Review: Well Worth Reading - By D. Walter
Summary: 4 Stars
Zadie Smith's White Teeth was a pleasure to read, yet the novel left something to be desired - especially the inadequate resolution. Smith's impeccable wit is apparent from the first page of the novel, transforming what would normally be a grim attempted suicide into a comical, ill-fated endeavor. It is in such a manner that Smith brings up numerous thought provoking issues ranging from race, to war, to religion, her clever style making such topics seem so extraneous to real life while at the same time subtly disclosing the fact that understanding them and coping with them is essential.Smith's character development is superb, intertwining the tales of two very different families - the Jones and the Iqbals - and delving into the diverse histories of each character: Archie's failed marriage and attempted suicide, Samad's inability to find satisfaction in his wife, and the two fathers' wartime partnership, due to convenience rather than chemistry. Then there's Clara's rejection of her mother's religion and way of life, and her short-lived fling with an otherwise unwanted schoolboy; Alsana's hatred of India; Magid, Millat, and Irie's linked fates; countless histories which all coincide brilliantly under Smith's writing. While there is certainly a wealth of well-rounded characters for Smith to play with, she spends too much time with flatter characters who clutter the story.
Smith waits until the middle of the novel to introduce the Chalfens, a family of characters who bear a great deal of importance to the text. However, their link to anything preceding their entrance is weak, and the change in focus is too abrupt, bringing the pace of the novel to a sudden halt. It takes Smith some time to rebuild confidence in the novel, at which point it picks back up. Unfortunately, the end of the book arrives very quickly at such an instance, and after Smith had put a lot of work into building suspense, the climax was painfully unsatisfying and left me unhappy.
Essentially, Smith's problem is her inconsistent writing quality. There is so much excellent writing to be found in this book, but Smith fails to maintain her exceptional prose evenly throughout. As a result, it was difficult to enjoy White Teeth as I would have liked. Smith pulls this off while moving the novel along at an extremely brisk pace - but this unfortunately works against her at some points. Taking the focus away from flatter characters coupled with a more satisfying resolution would have earned this book a higher score, but Smith's wit combined with the way in which she introduces and explores important issues makes White Teeth well worth reading.
Book Review: So Dark. So Beautiful.
Summary: 5 Stars
Zadie Smith has filled WHITE TEETH with cultural tension that drips from every relationship. Samad worries that his sons are being corrupted like all the other children in England. Alsana does not ever want to go back to India because she feels her family is safe in England. But Samad would not agree that "safe" is as clear as Alsana thinks it is. The minds, traditions, rituals, and morality of his sons are being eroded and destroyed. His sons are not safe. To him, Alsana is only "thankful [they] are in England . . . because [she] has swallowed it whole," believing the lie of safety that promises physical security while your cultural foundation is eaten away beneath you.
The question is, like Archie asks Samad on multiple occasions, "What kind of a world do [you] want your children to grow up in?" It is ironic that, much the same way Alsana is blinded by the actual world in which she lives, Samad believes that the world that is corrupting the morality of his sons is England itself. What he fails to recognize is that his moral failures - his affair with his son's teacher, his personal failure with what Poppy Burt-Jones calls his "incredible act of self-control," . . . his "sense of sacrifice," . . . and his abstinence and self-restraint - are the real source of his sons' moral failings.
The difference is that Alsana is not worried about the truth within herself or the people she loves. She is more concerned with, as she tells Neena, "the truth that can be lived with." She is tired of the tangled roots of their past and wants to struggle with today's problems, not worrying about or regretting over what lies in their yesterdays. She wants Samad to do the same, to remove his leg from out of the past and root it firmly in the present. What she fails to realize is what areas of Samad's have made the adjustment. His cultural roots may still lie with India, but much of his emotion and mental fantasy has grounded itself in his English present.
All of this familial frustration happens within an England that is struggling with the same interracial problems as their family. The country's battle between their nostalgic whitewashed past and their multi-ethnic present and future is at the center of the novel as well, not just in London but in its former colonies that are still trying to find their post-colonial identities.
Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens
Book Review: Indian, Jamaican & English culture all captured here - excellent book!!
Summary: 5 Stars
I loved reading this book.
Zadie Smith weaves a very funny, poignant and at times heart wrenching story of two families from very different backgrounds who come together as friends. She expresses the worries many immigrant families feel when they are trying to raise their children in a culture different to their own. How much do they give up in order fit in, and how much do they hold on to, in order to stay true to their religion, roots and beliefs? Immigrant parents are often torn, they've usually moved to a new land for a better life, but not everything that comes with the move is to their liking. The cultures often clash and a struggle between parents, their children, pop culture, schools and community etc. can ensue. These are the very things that Zadie Smith addresses in "White Teeth".
A good portion of the story is told through the voice of Samad, a Bengali father who has moved to England and has made friends with an Englishman Archie, and his Jamaican wife Clara. However, the other part is told through their children and how they feel about the age in which they are living and how they deal with their own angst and growing pains. Clara's family and other characters add quite a bit of entertainment to the story too. The way in which Zadie has written the dialogue was fun to read. As I read, I could hear the accents of the Bengali family, the English characters, the crass youth and the Jamaican patois of Clara and her family. I found myself laughing out loud many many times throughout the book - once nearly falling off the bike at the gym!
Personally, I'd liked to have known more about Archie and Clara's relationship and how that marriage survived it's differences, but I thoroughly enjoyed living the ups and downs of Samad and his wife Alsana's relationship and the exploits of the children in the book.
Overall, an excellent read! I feel I may be slightly biased however, as my multicultural background (Indian, Jamaican, English) is main theme of this book - and that NEVER happens, plus it is set in the 70's & 80's in England which is the era of my teenage years, so i could really relate on so many levels!!! Having said that, this book was recommended to me by a middle-aged white American woman - so i guess it's enjoyable to a broad range of people!
Book Review: Getting to the root
Summary: 4 Stars
Zadie Smith's White Teeth at first glance is an examination of the role that race, gender and religion play in London, England. But it is also a deeper look at how memory and history shape people and society. The novel follows Archibald Jones, "the chaff" of Britain and Samad Iqbal, a Muslim Bengali through the scenery of war, marriage, parenthood and religious fanaticism.White Teeth weaves present and past together, creating identity through oral histories. These pivotal stories are set apart as "Root Canal" stories, which explain where the characters believe their roots lie. In this way, White Teeth, becomes the overarching metaphor for story telling.
By incorporating the tooth metaphor that she laid out in the novel's title, Smith ties in the concept of oral history. Smith gives these oral histories as much attention as she does to her characters' stories in the present. Smith suggests that, true or not, these oral histories - these memories as deep as any other roots - shape who they are.
In summing up his roots, Samad's telling of his great-grandfather's near brush with heroism and fame becomes a running joke throughout the novel. At the same time that the repetition is humorous, Smith allows a more serious aspect to creep in. Samad holds his great-grandfather on a pedestal of achievement but his story is so inconsistent - it conflicts with written history and is subject to numerous confused re-tellings - that the reader quickly understands the problem of putting too much faith in memories and story telling.
Irie reinforces this message as she attempts to retrace her family's story. In her case, too many stories are missing. The roots of her past are as absent as her mother's two front teeth.
What is so compelling about Smith's oral history/teeth as family tree metaphor is that she uses it to equally discredit her theory that the characters' pasts decide who they are. Despite all the tensions of race, ethnicity, gender and age, and the ever-present problem of assimilation among the younger generations, the one thing all the characters have in common is their white teeth.
Smith does a magnificent job of demonstrating how everyone - no matter how British or how "normal" - has roots that set them apart. This sense of not belonging is exactly what unifies us in the end.
Book Review: A delightful ride on a post-modernist roller-coaster
Summary: 5 Stars
A wonderfully hilarious look at two generations of two families in modern Britain. After divorcing his first wife, simple, dependable, white-bread Archibald Jones marries a half-black Jamaican woman and renews his acquaintance with Samad Iqbal, his old war buddy. Archie and Clara have a daughter, Irie, an intelligent, ambitious girl who nevertheless finds herself a social outcast. The Iqbals, émigrés from Bangladesh, (formerly Bengal), suffer from a serious case of culture clash, which lends this book much of its satiric bite. Samad wishes to preserve his proud Bengali heritage and pass it on to his twin sons, Millat and Magid, but finds his efforts thwarted by the corrupting power of North London society. None of these people really fit in, and their efforts to pull through anyway make us want to cheer them on despite the silliness and hypocrisy we see in them. Enough family history is spelled out to make us realize how much each of these people are programmed by attitudes and events that held sway before they were even born. Some of it seems ludicrous, much of it is irrational, but being the past, it can't be escaped. Do we even have choices, or are our lives predetermined by accident of birth?
This novel asks us to examine the question of how the individual fits into society, and at what point our own inner need to express our individuality (as well as our heritage) becomes a detriment - not only to society, but to ourselves because of society's reaction to us. With the introduction of the super-mouse, a product of modern genetic engineering, Smith seems to be championing (or is she skewering?) the unpopular notion that only through greater uniformity can we ever hope to overcome mankind's seemingly innate tendency to hate and fear anyone who seems different - that if disappearance is the price one pays for assimilation, then let's pay up and before even one more child grows up hating herself because she doesn't look like the girls in the magazines. A delightful ride on a post-modernist roller-coaster, with memorable characters, delicious dialogue, and plenty of serious points to make. This book is a must-read for intellectual young women who felt they weren't popular in school, but many conservative white Anglo-Saxon males will wonder what all the fuss is about.