White Teeth is an expansive, detailed, and beautifully written attempt to encapsulate the social chaos that blossoms at the bridging of generational, national and sexual mindsets. It reminds me very much of the freeflowing histories written by Marquez and Allende, as well as Salman Rushdie's strange little one-off treatise on cultural alienation, Fury. (Samad, in particular, reminds me quite a bit of Fury's Malik Solanka.)

Smith does many things well. She has a serious ear for dialogue and accent, she knows how to manage the flow and pacing of a story, and she's quite skilled at employing large concepts (genetic manipulation, immigrant psychology, the concept of history itself) both as fact and as metaphor. Her cast of characters is varied and nearly every one of them comes off as a fully flesh and blood human being. However, it's in terms of these personalities that I feel she makes her biggest misstep.

Zadie Smith is what I'd call an Ironist. I don't mean this in the Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Jon Stewart sense. I don't mean that she's a comedian. I mean it in the sense that the territory she stands on--that her narrator in White Teeth stands on--is one whose boundaries are staked out in terms of what she is not. My friend Brandon commented below that Smith shows "blatant contempt for every character except the one who is clearly based on the author." While I understand where he's coming from, I don't think it's contempt per se. On the contrary, I think Smith has deep feelings for most of her characters--even the more despicable ones like Crispin and Millat. I think that what Brandon interprets as contempt is something far more ambiguous: let's call it detached superiority.

The Ironist defines herself through the process of over-defining others. Every character in this novel is over-defined, over-drawn. While this provides us with a great, at times excruciating level of detail, it also paints each of them into a kind of cage wherein all of their actions are predictable. Each of them has a sort of "final vocabulary" (cf. Rorty) that defines the limits of what they might do or say--the doctrines of Islam and the Watchtower Society, of PETA or clinical science. In the worst cases, their adherence to these vocabularies allows Smith to slip them into easy "types" (see: Mr. Topps, Crispin, Joshua, Marcus, the various members of FATE). Smith creates her authorial/narrative identity--what's called a metastable personality--by passively proving that she is not limited by such a final vocabulary, and that in escaping their confines she has a broader, more comprehensive view of the social workings of the world. This is, generally speaking, the goal of any omniscient narrator, but the way that Smith goes about writing this one in particular imparts a certain sense of smugness (the parenthetical asides to the reader, the knowing winks, the jokes at the expense of easy targets) that isn't always present.

The metastable personality is the natural reaction to uncomfortability with final vocabularies, but it itself is of course just as self-defining as any of them (albeit in the opposite direction). It instinctually yearns for instability, but prefers to admire chaos from afar rather than living in it. The metastable personality knows that in order to maintain coherence it must remain stable, and that the only way to remain stable is to balance itself on the disbelief of all known final vocabularies. Smith writes off worldview after worldview, but is of course unable to articulate her own because her own is simply the absence of adherence to any such worldview.

This isn't so much a criticism of Smith's work as it is an explanation of why it is the way it is, and why it can be read as contempt.

DNF at about 100 pages i was getting put in a serious reading slump

”Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.”

White Teeth focuses on the later lives of two wartime friends - the Bangladeshi Samad Iqbal and the Englishman Archie Jones - and their families in London.

Well. This was disappointing. Luckily I was a huge fan of Zadie’s writing itself, and so I’m not ruling out trying her other books... which means @ab_reads has not disowned me.

In reality, this should have worked for me. I enjoy stories that span decades, that follow multiple people and families. But this narrative just felt a bit TOO all over the place, with too many characters and a number of different storylines that felt completely unrelated until too late in the book. Like yeah, everything ties together eventually, but it just felt ridiculous to me.

None of the characters were particularly likeable either. I don’t need to like the characters in order to enjoy a book, but in this instance it was really off-putting. Samad, in particular, I just could not stand. The only one who I was rooting for was Irie, and she just didn’t get enough page time!

On the upside, I learnt a LOT about Jehovah’s Witnesses! I found those parts incredibly interesting, as well as the mixture of all the different cultures and religions. Smith’s writing and commentary is so witty and clever, I laughed out loud on a few occasions. So hey, it wasn’t all bad?

Overall, just not for me. I felt like it tried too hard! 2.5 stars.

The more I think about this book, the more I marvel at what Zadie Smith was able to create through it. I seriously almost didn't make it through this read, and it is only in the looking back that I see just how brilliant it is. Smith starts with two characters, then links character after character to them.

It all starts with two men lost in WWI, having no real role in it, and discover it has ended without their knowledge. They capture a war architect after the war and invent stories in some attempt to claim true manhood. There is so much story in between. Two twin brothers, one who is sent back to the Middle East in hopes of retaining the Muslim ways. The other fully engaged in all things secular.

Smith does a lot of meandering, but in the end, what do a fundamentalist Muslim, a Jehovah's Witness, and ardent animal rights activists have in common? Sounds like a joke, but as it turns out, quite a lot.

A few things this book had me thinking about.
-How science and religion have become polarized.
-How different one generation is from the next, and how this impacts both.
-Many things are not at all what we expect.
-What defines manhood.
-How black and white thinking is so dangerous.
-How one action leads to unforeseen others, and all of life seems connected.

My only real problem with this read was the length of the meandering narratives.

“Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.”

In a famous short story, Henry James suggests that any work of art has a secret meaning, waiting to be discovered. He calls it “the figure in the carpet”. I’ve always thought, taking this metaphor to the extreme, that there are many kinds of carpets, and that sometimes you can figure the figure, so to speak, simply by contemplating the visible part of it, but in most cases you have to turn the carpet upside down to study the number of knots, the direction and the overlapping of the threads – that is, the episodic characters and the eventual red herrings, the narrative layers, the time frame, etc. Obviously, a complicated inside out does not necessarily mean a beautifully elaborated figure and vice versa, a deceivingly complicated pattern is sometimes realized with few pinpricks. But it also happens that the result be an intricate design both on front and back.

This is the case of Zadie Smith’s novel, White Teeth, and this why the author was so often compared to Salman Rushdie, even though their styles are entirely different: the worlds they create are crowded and deafening, with colours so vivid that hurt, with situations so absurd that forever stagger between tragic and comic, giving the reader, at the end of the story, the feeling that he just escaped, bewildered and disoriented, from a boisterous oriental fair. And this feeling is not caused by the world created (at least not entirely) but by an all-round narrative that exploits indiscriminately and often hilariously a jumble of information in a way that can be funny, true, but sometimes also tiring:

Whilst he slipped in and out of consciousness, the position of the planets, the music of the spheres, the flap of a tiger-moth’s diaphanous wings in Central Africa, and a whole bunch of other stuff that Makes Shit Happen had decided it was second-chance time for Archie. Somewhere, somehow, by somebody, it had been decided that he would live.

This ambiguity of the tone is what I appreciated most and loved least, and no, it is not a contradiction, let me explain. The ability of the author to offer simultaneously the two sides of the story is truly amazing and it is masterfully created using many narrative tools that would deserve an extensive analysis of their own, like the free indirect style of the multiple narrators, the flashback and flash-forward in time frame, the permanent mixture of aesthetic, psychological, social and political, the exceptional use of various ranges of language, from scientific jargon to street and school slang (I think this is one of the most valuable traits of Zadie Smith’s prose), and so on, and so forth. All this to build a world that escapes categorization, not only because it is free of the usual stereotypes – the immigrant tragic condition, or the middle-class mediocrity, or the religion fanaticism, or the righteousness of animal-rights fighters, but also because it denies life either its tragedy or comedy, defining it only as frenzy.

What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll — then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greetings cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.

However, the recognition of all these qualities was an intellectual one. Yes, the author is good, the more so as she is very young, although, like all the young writers she cannot help a little showing of her literary knowledge. The result is still impressive, a book with a complicated structure, but never sloppy or confused, for she firmly holds the reins of the narrative. Even the end, considered by many a critic forced and scrappy (Anthony Quinn, in his New York Times review  considers it an “overeager braiding of plot lines”, with a focus that “becomes fuzzy”) does not contradict the whole. All these qualities do not conceal a certain heaviness of the reading: the novel is tiring to follow, and (at east for me) it was like watching a show from a backstage where there is an activity as interesting and intense as the performance on the stage. That is, I liked better the back of the carpet than the front. Or, to use the author’s own words I began my review with, the history inside made me forget, more than once, the history outside. And this is not only because of too much detail (it is this, too) but also because of too much comment: the multiple narrators are never truly alone, their voice being too often amended by a mocking and overwhelming auctorial voice that trims mercilessly thoughts, actions, consequences:

Despite opting for a life of dentistry, she had not yet lost all of the poetry in her soul, that is, she could still have the odd Proustian moment, note layers upon layers, though she often experienced them in periodontal terms.

Overall, an interesting debut that promises an inciting literary career. I know she wrote a second novel, but I won’t read it for now. However, in some ten-year time, it will be interesting to see her evolution.

Un libro sobre padres e hijos, inmigración, cultura y mucho humor.

I started this book back in September and finishing it in November. Granted I did take a 17 day vacation and set this one aside during that break, but this was a huge struggle for me to get through.

This is a character study, with religious themes and historical references. Two men, who find themselves alone during the war become best friends-- Archibald Jones and Samad Iqbal. Generational in nature and how certain events shaped their lives in the most odd way. Different cultures are introduced, characters from Jamaica, Bengal and those passionate about leaflets and witnesses. I enjoyed the generational nature of how these families crossed paths and how each decision led to the most ridiculous set of events.

The writing was amazing, at time the book was hilarious, sarcastic and poignant. The research Smith must have done to find out about all these different cultures and religions and political events during the 1970s-1990s was spot on. Why was this such a slog for me? I cannot pinpoint it except to say too long, too many paragraphs and pages of philosophical meandering. While there were small sections of plot, it felt like nothing happened. The ending felt rushed and slightly disappointed. I could put this down for weeks and never want to pick it back up again. Each time I did pick it up, I enjoyed it more than I thought. This is a hard one to rate, therefore I'm going with a 2 as GR calls that "It was ok". I would say that this book reminded me of JK Rowling's "A Casual Vacancy" and parts of "A Prayer for Owen Meany" (maybe just the religious parts). Overall, I'm glad I read this one, couldn't recommend it for every reader and I'm so glad I'm finished with it.

A buddy read with my sister, White Teeth is a fun, frolicking read that tells of the friendship of two families over many decades. The first part is the best--the meeting of Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal in World War Two and their continued companionship in London after the war. This is an immigrant story, a class story, and a religious story, because Archie is British, his young wife Clara is Jamaican, and the Iqbals are from Bangladesh.

The second half of the novel is devoted to the offspring of Archie and Clara-- Irie Jones, and Samad and Alsana's two sons, Millat and Magid Iqbal. Samad does something unforgivable at this point, that separates his family in a horrible manner. I was very angry with Samad for a long time after this. Fathers make stupid decisions sometimes that have momentous consequences for the whole family.

The last part dragged a bit until the nicely rounded off ending brought a serendipity to the whole.

White Teeth is a little masterpiece. Written by Zadie Smith when she was just 23, it encompasses half a century of history and the life of two (three-ish) families and a mouse.

It all starts with the friendship of Archibald Jones and Samad Iqbal, two WWII veterans that became joined at the hip following the days after the war was over. A single moment will cement this friendship and shape their lives and those of their children, and a single moment, in a weird concatenation of events, will decide its fate like the perfect throw of a coin.

The way the story is structured, as well as a few plot points, made me think of East of Eden right away, but the thing that resonated the most is the message that depite all efforts by parents or guardians or friends, every person will create their own path. This is extremely clear when we compare the life of Samad’s twins, for which he desires a brilliant life and a fervent interest in their culture and religion, but despite all his wishes (and all of the external involvement by other people), the twins find themselves at opposite extremes.

The most refreshing thing of the novel is the exuberant prose (effervescent, as Edward Cullen would say), one that consistently follows the lives and deeds of all the many characters that inhabit the book without ever losing its verve and zest.

The characters and all their qualities (but mainly flaws) are so fleshed out they feel real, and so does the backdrop in which they’re set. London becomes alive in White Teeth, and it’s a London tourists rarely get to see: it’s the city of immigrants and second generations, full of different cultures and beliefs and longings for a home that had to reap what the British Empire sowed and make good of what they got.

I just reread the review and it sounds like the book is a bore but did I tell you that it’s funny as hell? Sometimes I had to pause the audiobook because I kept laughing. Also the audiobook is soooo good you don’t understand if you can and you want please listen to it.

Čitaće se još Zejdi Smit. Dobra priča i kvalitetno razrađeni likovi. Britko, sarkastično, naravno, uz dozu politizacije, ali, sve u svemu - zadovoljna! Knjiga ima "frenzenovski" vajb, s tim da on ovakve priče kroji mnogo bolje. Svakako, treba uzeti u obzir i da je ovo autorkin prvenac koji je napisala jako mlada.

p.s. mogla je biti malo kraća (druga polovina knjige se otegla).

"the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect."

הספר עוסק במגוון נושאים ובינם: הגירה, הטמעות, פונדמנטליזם דתי וחברתי, גזענות, חברות ומשפחתיות כל זאת באמצעות התבוננות בשתי משפחות לאורך כ 100 שנים: משפחת ג'ונס ומשפחת איקבל.

ההתחלה של הסיפור חזקה: ארצ'י ג'ונס מנסה להתאבד לאחר מערכת גירושים מכוערת. הוא ניצל ע"י בעל איטליז מוסלמי שרואה בהתאבדות מעשה לא כשר וכך הוא זוכה לחיות ולהכיר את אישתו העתידית קלרה: ג'מייקאנית יפיפיה חסרת שיניים שניצלת בעור שינה מאימה ומחבר שלה ששניהם קיצוניים נוצריים.

בשנת 1975 משפחות ג'ונס ואיקבל גרות במרחק מספר דלתות אחת מהשניה. הספר מתאר את חברותם האמיצה וארוכת השנים של ארצ'י ג'ונס עם סאמד איקבל, מוסלמי בנגלי. הם נפגשו בשנת 1945 כשהיו בצוות טנק שכשל בימיה האחרונים של מלחמת העולם ה- 2. ארצ'י בחור עדין נפש וחסר החלטיות התחבר לסאמד הנחוש, הארצי וההחלטי.

סאמד ממתין לאישתו שאותה ימצא בשידוך.

שתי המשפחות כאמור משתקעות בצפון מערב לונדון. לארצ'י וקלרה נולדה בת שלה הם קוראים איירי ולסמאד ואלסנה נולדים תאומים שלהם קראו מאג'יד ומילאט. בשנת 1975 סאמד עסוק באובססיביות בהיסטוריה המשפחתית שלו ובעיקר בשאלה האם סבו היה ראש המורדים הבנגליים ומאידך בהשפעות של היטמעות בסביבה המערבית על האמונה הדתית האיסלמית של ילדיו.

בזמן שארצ'י מבקש לו חיים של הרמוניה ושלווה, סאמד מחפש את המחלוקות והוויכוחים.

ההתנגשות בין העקרונות המוסלמיים הדתיים ובין החיים הארציים לא מאחרת להגיע. זהו חוט השזור לאורך כל הספר: בגיל 57 סאמד מתקשה לגשר על הפער שבין הציפיות שלו מהחיים כמוסלמי והחיים עצמם. הוא מתאהב במורה למוזיקה של התאומים , אנגליה, לבנה וצעירה ממנו בהרבה שנים. הוא סובל במשך חודשים אומללים ממצב של עוררות מינית מוגברת שמשבשת עליו את דעתו ואת חיו ומובילה אותו לפעול בניגוד לעקרונות הקוראן (כנראה נאסר על הגברים לאונן שכן האוננות האובססיבית נתפסת בעיניי סאמד כחטא בלתי יסולח), עד שהוא פוצח ברומאן מטורף עם המורה וכשהוא נתפס הוא מחליט שבניו לא יסבלו מההתדרדרות המוסרית שהוא סבל ממנה.

סאמד חוטף את בנו הבכור, מאג'יד, ובשארית כספו וחסכונותיו משעות ארוכות של עבודה במלצרות, שולח אותו למשפחתו בפקיסטן שם יספוג ערכי דת ומשפחה ולא יתפתה לשטן. כל זאת בזמן שמבנו מילאט אין הוא מצפה לדבר: מילאט פרחח בעייתי ופוחז, חסר גבולות ואמונה מעביר ימיו בעישון סמים ובגיל מתקדם יותר בשיגול נשים שנופלות לרגליו. סאמד לא מספר לאישתו וכשהיא מגלה על הקטסטרופה, היא מחליטה שלא לדבר אליו יותר עד שבנה יוחזר אליה. מה שיקרח למעשה 8 שנים ארוכות ואומללות שבהן הוציאה את סאמד מדעתו ומשלוותו (בצדק).

בנקודה זו הספר מתבדר למספר כיווני עלילה לא צפויים שבגינם הורדתי לו 2 כוכבים: איירי בתם של ארצ'י וקלרה מאוהבת במילאט שלא מעיף לעברה מבט. בנסיונותיה לרכוש את ליבו ולהצילו מגורל עגום, הם נתפסים בפשיטה יחד עם ג'ושוע שלפנס, מעשנים חשיש. העונש שהשלישיה מקבלים הוא לימודים משותפים בביתו של ג'ושוע אחת לשבוע כדי שהילדים יספגו קצת תרבות וחינוך אנגליים.

בנקודה זו מציגה הסופרת משפחה שלישית: השלפנים. האב, מרקוס, דר' לגנטיקה עוסק במחקר משקיע באיירי תוך שהוא חוזר ומדגיש שלמרות הישגיה האקדמיים היא לא תהיה מסוגלת לעסוק במחקר. והאם, ג'וייס, פשוט מתאהבת במילאט עד כדי כך שהיא חותרת לאמץ אותו ולהחליף את הוריו. אפילו האב מבחין באופן שבו מילאט מסמם את דעתה של אישתו אבל הוא לא מתערב כשהיא מציעה למילאט חדר בביתם וכסף.

הצגת השלפנים כמשפחה אנגליה לבנה מהמעמד הבינוני אמורה להציג לקורא את האנטי תזה למשפחת ג'ונס ולמשפחת איקבל: משפחה מודרנית ליברלית שמחוברת להוויה של מעמד הביניים בכל ההתנהגויות שלה. האב עוסק בפיתוחים מדעיים שמעוררים מחלוקה ויהוו כר נרחב לדיון בחלק השני של הספר והאם, עקרת בית שכביכול עסוקה בילדים וברווחתם. עד כדי כך היא עסוקה שהיא לא שמה לב שג'ושוע הופך לאקטביסט למען זכויות בעלי חיים ומתכנן יחד עם חבריו מעשה נקמה שישחרר את העכבר המוטנט של אביו ושילמד את אביו השנוא לקח. היא גם לא מסוגלת להבחין בחזרה בתשובה של מילאט ובריחתו לפונדמנטליזם הדתי האיסלמי תוך שהוא מתחבר לחוגים קיצויים. היא מסייעת לו בטיפולים אצל הפסיכיאטרית שלה, שמעבירה למה מידע רפואי חשאי שמילאט לקוי קשב (כן לא מסומם עד חוסר הכרה).

הספר מגיע לשיאו עם חזרתו של מאג'יד שבאופן מטריד ביותר עבור סאמד (מטריד עד כדי חירפון) הפך לעורך דין ליברלי המתגייס לסייע למרקוס במאבקו לקבלת מימון, פטנט והכרה על העכבר המוטנט.

עתה כשכל השחקנים מוצבים על הלוח (כולל הסבתא הג'מייקאנית המטורפת של איירי - אמא של קלרה עם סיפור חיים שכולל ניצול מיני ע"י אנגלים, אונס ע"י איש דת ולידה במהלך רעידת אדמה. וכולל החבר הפונדמנטליסט לשעבר של קלרה שמשפיע על הסבתא לקיצוניות של הנוצרים) הכל מגיע לנקודת הרתיחה המתוכננת ולעימות בראש השנה של 1992, בכנס שעורך מרקוס לכבוד העכבר המוטאנט.

אז נכון הוא שהספר חלקו אירוני ומשעשע, וחלקו כתוב בחן. אבל גם חלקו משעמם, מתבדר לכיווני עלילה מיותרים ומתארך ללא קץ בלי קתרזיס אמיתי בסופו.

הספר עוסק בסוגיות של הגירה והשתלבות חברתית, בגזענות ובפונדמנטליזם כפתרון הסופי לכל הבעיות החברתיות. יחד עם זאת הוא פשוט מסתיים בקול ענות חלושה ומאכזבת.

ההישג האמיתי של זיידי סמית הוא בהעמדת מראה ראליסטית בפנים של הקורא, וקודם וראשית לכל בפני הקורא האנגלי. זיידי סמית מציירת חברה מפולגת, גיזענית, מיזוגנית, שבקצב מסחרר נוהה אחר הפונדמנטליזם הדתי לסוגיו (נוצרי ואיסלמי) כפתרון בר קיימה לכל החולות הרעות וכל זה כבר בשנת 2003. היא מציירת את ערש הדמוקרטיה הליברלית המפרפרת ונרמסת תחת רגליהם הגסות של גורמים חברתיים שונים בתירוצים וסיפורים שונים. אומנם בספר הפיצוץ נגמר בקול ענות חלושה, אבל זה בגלל שלא היה לה האומץ הספרותי ללכת עד הסוף עם המהלך שהובילה בפרק האחרון. אולי הכוונה שלה היתה רק להעביר קריאת אזהרה, אין לדעת, אבל מאז המצב רק החמיר.

בסך הכל מרוב הספר נהנתי, אבל אני לא יכולה לכתוב שהתפעמתי או שהספר מופת. יש בו קטעים מעניינים ומצחיקים שכתובים היטב. אבל גם יש בו חלקים מיותרים, פומפוזיים, מטיפניים שבעריכה טובה יותר היו מקוצצים או מוסרים.

One star? Of course this is not a one-star wretched ignominous failure, this is a mighty Dickensian epic about modern Britain. But not for me. It's a question of tone. I have now tried to read this one twice and each time I find I'm groaning quietly and grinding my teeth. Zadie Smith's omniscient narrator, alas for me, has an air of horrible smirkiness, like a friend who just can't help pointing out all the less than pleasant attributes of everyone else, all in the name of life-affirming humour, allegedly, but gradually wearing you down. Didn't anyone get sick of this apart from me? I hear this kind of humour in current British comedy all the time. When it's cranked up to the max and runs at 200 miles an hour, it's great, as in the recent political satire movie In the Loop (recommended) but when it's on a low leisurely level, as in a big sprawling novel, it just gets on my wick. It might be a symptom of the cultural cringe I discuss a propos The Age of Elegance - British writers can no longer take their country and culture that seriously, they feel somehow that it's just not very cool and so their default attitude is self-deprecation. You don't get this in big novels about modern America - "American Pastoral", "We Were the Mulvaneys" and "The Corrections" and "Freedom" spring to mind. Franzen, for instance, uses humour all the time and excoriates large areas of American society, but there's no perpetual undermining of his own characters for the sake of inexpensive laughs.
My head says I should like White Teeth but my heart says Zadie Smith was a literary ad-man's dream come true.
For a good, funny book about multicultural Britain, see "The Buddha of Suburbia" by Hanif Kureishi.
For a great review of White Teeth which eloquently puts the case against, whilst trying not to, see Ben's review here

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/....