Zadie Smith has been hugely celebrated for this book and others, and WHITE TEETH is the first I have read by her. It is a multi-generational/multi-ethnic/multi-themed tome of a book, and though two months or so have passed since I finished it, I am still not quite certain how I feel about it.
One one hand, Smith is brilliant at sketching out characters. They are larger-than-life, and yet incredible human. The whole novel is permeated with a sense of heightened reality, that everything could be true, but is taken just a step too far.
The book tells the story of Brit Archie and his Bengali friend, Samad, and later of their children. The story is set in London, a place so alive and varied, it is practically a character in itself, and was a perfect choice by Smith. I liked the part of the book which focused on Archie and Samad, who are very memorable, particularly the latter, in that they are almost caricatures of themselves or the roles they are meant to fill.
The story lost me a bit after about two-thirds, when it veered into so many directions, and focused on the second generation. I didn't much care about any of the characters, at this point, and the story was too all-over-the-place, like lots of loose and electric wires which are never satisfactorily untangled.
Despite these gripes, it is a worthwhile read in that it brings up issues that are relevant today still. Smith does not shy away from uglier, controversial topics and throws up questions regarding race, identity, purpose, religion, which most people probably consider at some point or another in their lives. I think I would have preferred this book to have been two volumes, and I might have read only the first one about Archie and Samad.
Nonetheless, I can see myself keeping an eye on this author and what else she has on offer.

Find more reviews and bookish fun at http://www.princessandpen.com

Well, given all the hub-bub and the misogynistic criticisms and the swells of plaudits and the what-have-you, I can't say I came to Zadie Smith's landmark novel, White Teeth free of experience. I mean, I honestly had no idea what the hell it was about, but I sure knew a lot of people felt a lot of things about it. James Wood's infamous, if not myopic, review wherein he coined a new syllogism "hysterical realism" in which he parodies the likes of Pynchon, Smith, DFW, etc. setup some kind of expectation within me—that this would be a zany, paranoid fever-dream full of erudition and weird quasi-realism, etc. That's not at all what it is. Any probably all the better for it.

Instead, it's a pretty traditional familial saga about diaspora, post-colonialism, race, religion, time, the expectations we have of our children, tradition, science, extremism, fate, chance, and more. If I had to do that thing where you liken a thing to another thing that invariably isn't really an accurate comparison at all, but it works well enough that people kind of get it, I would say Zadie Smith's novel is actually more like Franzen's The Corrections but better, because there's more to it than White People Problems.

Because my expectations were in a totally different spot, it took me a few days of reading to really get bearings, because I kept looking for the odd turn, the peculiarity so buzzed about through Wood's analysis. But I then settled in, realizing that this wasn't going to be a quirky, weird trip, but a really engagingly told story of a family in the UK, living the diaspora in all its myriad variations from East to West.

Smith writes with precision, with light touches, and with humor. The book, hardly a pot-boiler is a real page turner as its chorus of voices builds to a crescendoing closing few pages where stakes have been set for 400 pages, and now, everyone's all in one room, and it's going to explode, but you just don't know how.

As soon as I realized my per-conceived notions about the book were misappropriated, I feared that the book would wear thin. It never did for me, and I really, deeply loved the characters and how their weird story of post-colonial life in England spun out. I'll be eager to read Smith's other books. And James Wood is an idiot.

A multi-generational, multi-ethnic story of two (three, if you count the Chalferns who come in later) families in England during the last quarter of the 20th century. I have to admit I laughed a lot and looked forward to being entertained each time I sat down with this giant tome, for each morsel was interesting, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Archie (English) & Samad (Bengali) are two war-time buddies who marry women a whole generation younger than them. Archie’s wife Clara is Jamaican and their daughter is Irie who hates her kinky hair and wishes to straighten it at any cost. Samad’s wife Alsana is Bengali and their identical twins are Majid and Millat. Yet this particular egg split differently, for Magid is the intellectual and Millat the emotional one. And the entire premise of the novel splits along the divide between intellect and faith, and the characters align themselves in either side of this schism. To widen the crevasse, Samad, trying to keep one of his marital indiscretions secret, packs Majid off to be educated in Bangladesh and keeps Millat at home, only to see the former emerge a pukka sahib and the latter wind up a religious radical. Enter the Chalferns: Jewish, liberal, academic and open minded, a family that adopts Millat and Irie to teach them proper English values after the two teenagers are busted for marijuana possession in school. The plot thickens and deepens as Jehovah’s Witnesses, Islamic radicals, and animal activists are thrown into the mix, along with the fact that Mr. Chalfern, with the help of Majid, is into the genetic engineering of mice, a concept that the religious Samad and Millat are fundamentally opposed to. Without giving more of the plot away, I will say that the allegiances and shift and sway, as this group of motley souls look for identity and purpose in their lives. A series of secondary conflicts arise throughout the book: black vs. white, husband vs. wife, parent vs. child, immigrant vs. native-born, war-time vs. post war generation.

No one is spared by Smith’s satirical omniscient narrator: Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, black and whites. The narrator also conceals vital information that is revealed later for more dramatic impact—sometimes 400 pages later, when one has forgotten the incident in this incident-packed story. I was reminded of Salman Rushdie, who has also taken an unsparing approach to laying bare the ills, prejudices and traumas of visible minorities in England. Smith has not faced the consequences that Rushdie faced, but she skirts some thin ice especially in parodying those ethnic and religious groups that take offence easier than others. Smith however, shows masterful control of the disparate story strands by bringing all the characters and the various interest groups into one place for a much anticipated finale on New Year’s Eve 1992. If I have to level one criticism at this novel, it is that the much expected “explosive ending” didn’t quiet happen.

Notwithstanding this last grouse, I highly recommend this book, a truly phenomenal debut effort.

Prvýkrát som o tejto knihe počula od Zuzy Fialovej v Kušnierikových Slovách_FM. Obaja ju náramne chválili, tak som si zapísala netypické britské meno autorky a zvláštny názov románu. Kým som sa dostala k tejto vypredanej knihe, stihla som prečítala NW aj Kambodžskú ambasádu a nadchýnala sa nad rozprávačským talentom spisovateľky. Všetci mi však hovorili najmä o Bielych zuboch. Zadie Smith román napísala, keď mala 25 (!) a opísala v ňom dve rodiny prisťahovalcov, ktorí žijú v sivom a upršanom meste a snívajú o lepšom živote pre seba aj pre svoje deti.

"V súčasnosti mám pocit, že keď človek do tejto krajiny vkročí, uzavrie zmluvu s diablom. Úradníkovi pri pulte odovzdáš pas, dostaneš razítko, chceš si zarobiť nejaké peniaze, nejako začať... nakoniec sa ale chceš vrátiť! Kto by tu chcel zostávať? Zima, mokro, bieda; strašné jedlo, noviny plné hrozných udalostí - kto by tu chcel zostávať? Na mieste, kde o teba nikto nestojí, len ťa tolerujú. Ako keby si bol zviera, ktoré nakoniec naučili čistotnosti. Kto by tu chcel zostávať? Ty si ale uzavrel zmluvu s diablom... vtiahne ťa to a nakoniec sa už k návratu nehodíš, vlastné deti ťa nespoznávajú, nepatríš nikam."

Biele zuby sú románom o priateľstve, láske, rodine aj o obyčajných problémoch v multikultúrnom meste plnom migrantov, dvojposchodových autobusov a meškajúcich vlakoch.

"Imigrant sa však musí smiať, keď počuje o obavách nacionalistov, vydesených z infekcií, infiltrácie, miešania rás, zatiaľčo toto je len prkotina v porovnaní s tým, čoho sa boja imigranti - s rozkladom a zmiznutím."

Ak ste nečítali, čítajte. Bez ohľadu na to, či je v Európe utečenecká kríza alebo teroristické útoky. Lebo veď všetci sem-tam chodíme na kebab alebo do indickej reštaurácie, no o čašníkoch, ktorí nás obsluhujú, nevieme vôbec nič.

As many other reviewers have commented, I wanted to like this book more than I did. It approached greatness in many ways---the clever and often hilarious dialogue, the quirky characters, the creative family histories, the rich and convincing place descriptions, and so on. Despite the strengths of each of these parts, as a whole the book fell far short of greatness. It took me until the final pages to figure out what was missing for me: I did not genuinely care about most of the characters. I did not feel sympathy for them, or root for them, or have my own ideas of how I hoped things would turn out.

This is likely due to the many, many story lines at play in the novel (story lines that span a hundred years in some cases). But it still felt unacceptable to me that the book begins with one of the most intimate moments a person can experience (though it is treated with humor) and closes with an equally major event in the life of that same character, yet we hardly KNOW this character. He is a central presence on page one and the final page, but he is lost in between. While I laughed at Joyce Chalfen, Alsana, Abdul-Mickey, Magid, Hortense, and a dozen more amusing and creative characters, I felt no emotional connection to them at all. The biggest disappointment perhaps was the disappearance of Clara's voice from the pages. They remained, though entertaining, very flat to me. The only character I sincerely rooted for and felt drawn to was Irie Jones. Her story alone, though it does not emerge until the second half of the book, made the novel worth reading to me.

I was intrigued enough by Zadie Smith's writing to give her other works a try, but I closed the book last night with a definite sense of a letdown.

This was excellent - funny, readable, thought-provoking and moving. Having now read all 4 of Zadie Smith's novels in reverse order, I think this one is the best, though "On Beauty" comes close. Beyond that I can't say much that hasn't been said before by wiser heads than mine.

Man, I've got to read something really good really soon. Not my favorite streak I'm having. I bought this paperback (it is a green one, I wish my cover was on GoodReads!) when it was brand new, and I've moved it with me a dozen times unread. So hopeful! Oh well.

There just wasn't any meaning for me. No one was moving, no development felt impactful, several were distasteful. Nothing I thought had a through-line did. I thought I saw the ending coming and it turned out to just be listless instead of predictable. I think it's just not my style, the overreaching literary fiction with all those sassy modern words, and characters of great failure.

I did like some ideas. The family betrayals had some sting, and the concept that when you choose your way in life you also are mostly "so eloquently" expressing your history. And the parts in the middle about the exquisitely hubristic Chalfens were sort of ok.

And I couldn't help thinking... Zadie Smith writes like a man? I'm not even sure what I mean by that, but the book's focus is so ordinary and masculine. Women and men writing books about men is great, it's fine, but my feeling is it would be a better idea if in doing so there was something good or important about it. (Shouldn't that be the case with any novel's selected characters? Why select them?) For having so many characters, there was such a tiny range of perspective. And when we learned a little about the women through the men's chapters and the daughter's, their progress was often more interesting than the focal characters'. I don't know why we couldn't watch Clara's awakening, Alsana's westernization, the niece's shame.

Oh, and that sex scene was like something a 12-year-old wrote about "Smallville."

Gave up a little past 60%, and even getting there was a struggle. I couldn't connect to the characters and found the forced wittiness/humor of the writing a little tiresome. I hope to give Zadie Smith another chance someday, but not this book.

Non sapevo di preciso cosa aspettarmi. Ne avevo letto la trama, sì; avevo pure cercato di cogliere il significato dietro la scelta di un titolo, ai miei occhi, alquanto peculiare. E tuttora non credo di avere una spiegazione precisa del significato che ho attribuito al libro e al racconto nella loro globalità.
Quando, quasi per caso, mi ero imbattuta in un video in cui si diceva che Zadie Smith era in grado di parlare, tramite la sua scrittura, dei legami, dei rapporti interpersonali come pochi altri sapevano fare, non credevo fino a tal punto.
Forse è anche in questo che sta il bello di trovare novità anche quando è da una vita che leggi; perché la sensazione che si prova quando si dà voce a ciò che hai vissuto in prima persona, quando lo vedi descritto con le parole giuste (anche se, fino a due secondi prima, non pensavi neanche esistessero, queste parole, per di più giuste), è impagabile. Ti trovi comunque di fronte a una storia a suo modo complessa, in cui vanno a collidere i più svariati aspetti della vita umana (ma d’altronde la stessa vita umana è complessa); tuttavia ne arrivi ad apprezzare anche i minimi dettagli, perché, forse, un tempo sono stati anche i tuoi, magari in forme diverse ma con la medesima base di partenza.

E ti ricordi che, forse, il passato non è sempre remoto, nemmeno il tuo.

Започвах и оставях книгата...
Някой беше сравнил Зейди Смит с Чимаманда Нгози Адичи...
“Бели зъби” се оказа разочарованието ми за 2020.
Разбира се това е абсолютно субективно, виждам, че много хора са я харесали.

Wood pooh-poohed this novel, inaptly, as it turns out, as hysterical realism. I'm not sure if Wood was interested in the bad gender politics of that particular generic designation, but the gross amalgamation of this text with Pynchon, Rushdie, Delillo, DFW does not make much sense. (It’s most similar to Delillo, I think, of the usual suspects listed therein.)

The primary figure is the odontic, which is most plainly significant to the extent that a character might be “from somewhere. She has roots” (23). Most of the major characters are subject to ‘root canals’ during the story, wherein their own genetic/ontic (as opposed to dental/odontic) roots are traced out. The ‘roots’ are typically nationality (Jamaica, Bangladesh, and England are the most important) and religion (Jehovah’s Witness, Islam, and Judaism).

As it happens, teeth gnash. They are destroyed through nocturnal bruxism. Root canals are necessary because the teeth are messed up. Following the figure, the British empire messed everything up—though the point of the text is equally that the Empire caused the gnashing, which is also a commingling, a bringing together. This in itself can’t be all bad—after all, the couples here are multinational: English prat marries Jamaican beauty, for instance. It's difficult to argue against miscegenated children, in my not all humble opinion. The novel’s great friendship is English prat and traditional Moslem (“very religious, lacking nothing except the faith” (53)), brought together in fighting fascism (a great story there (71-102)).

There’re other gnashings: generational discord, religious tactics (fundamentalist vel non), gender politics. On that last, we have a bizarre little bit:

But to be serious for a moment: as you know, I am a man whose profession it is to look deep inside of “Woman,” and, like a psychiatrist, mark her with a full bill of health or otherwise. And I feel sure, my friend (to extend a metaphor), that you have explored your lady-wife-to-be in such a manner, both spiritually and mentally, and found her not lacking in any particular. (43-44)

The speaker here is not a dentist, as one might otherwise expect from the thematic, but is rather a gynecologist. Does the thematic still work? Is drilling down into the tooth during a root canal similar to psychiatry? Is it like looking deep inside a woman’s cavernous birthing canal? Can one go spelunking in the vagina for spiritual/mental inventories? Does one fuck up marriage by not exploring?

Traditional Moslem wife has a rejoinder to all that, however:

I was married to Samad Iqbal the same evening of the very day I met him. Yes, I didn’t know him from Adam. But I liked him well enough. We met in the breakfast room on a steaming Delhi day and he fanned me with The Times. I thought he had a good face, a sweet voice, and his backside was high and well formed for man of his age. Very good. Now, every time I learn something more about him, I like him less. (66)

Husband’s traditionalism is well understood as resisting all that is solid melting into air: “I don’t wish to be a modern man! I wish to live as I was always meant to! I wish to return to the East!” (121). (Rejoinder: who “can pull the West out of ‘em once it’s in?” (id.)) The issue here is that “the sins of the Eastern father shall be visited upon the Western sons” (135), which is a primary component of the narrative here; “immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition” (id.), first as tragedy, second as farce, I suppose. The reiteration initiates not with original sin, but with “original trauma” (136)—“they can’t help but reenact the dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, from one brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign” (id.). Our traditionalist objects that “people call it assimilation when it is nothing but corruption” (159). (“it is still hard to admit,” however, “that there is no one more English than the Indian, no one more Indian than the English” (272).)

The obligatory Hegelian commentary: “We are split people. For myself, half of me wishes to sit quietly with my legs crossed, letting things that are beyond my control wash over me. But the other half wants to fight the holy war” (150). The obligatory Baudrillardian commentary: “A few found themselves seventeen years later at the British Empire Exhibition of 1924, dressed up as Jamaicans in the Jamaica exhibit, acting out a horrible simulacrum of their previous existence—tine drums, coral necklaces—for they were English now, more English than the English by virtue of their disappointments” (255).

The traditionalist would seek to control the offspring, who may not want to be traditionalists, loyal to mother country—but rather might want to become, say, fundamentalists, or secular progressives, or socialists, or loyal imperialists, or whatever. Dude laments that his kids “strayed so far from the life I had intended for them” (336). No dead hand control, yo. It is an important text for multinational households. There is a balance to be drawn between assimilation and ‘roots.’ I for one am annoyed by pure tradition, but am a proponent of history. Perhaps the former tells me what I should be, whereas the latter tells me what I am; the former, an idealism, recommends fascism, but not so much the latter, which is a bit more historical materialist. That said, our traditionalist contends that “tradition was culture, and culture led to roots, and these were good, these were untainted principles” (161). Dude doesn't like that assimilation to the empire leads to “your children are unrecognizable, you belong nowhere” (336), but that strikes me as basic to the postmodern condition at the imperial center and therefore par for the course, a progressive development overall. (What kind of weird sense of proto-fascist entitlement must one possess if one can demand belonging somewhere? Is it not an odd, dangerous demand? Traditionalists want to “live on solid ground, underneath safe skies” (176), which invokes basic fascist ideology: cf. Griffin’s  Modernism and Fascism.)

Anyway, plenty of other interesting things; it is a pregnant writing. Some Marxist content in characters of liberated niece of traditional Moslems as well as in scientist-socialist Jewish couple. (Also, omniscient narrator’s voice: “If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears more sinister” (161).) Tradition infects the kids, who are led to believe that they “stood schizophrenic, one foot in Bengal and one in Willsden” (183). The kids are “two of Zeno’s headfuck arrows” (384), wherein Zeno’s objective is to “establish multiplicity, the Many, as an illusion” and then “prove reality a seamless, flowing whole” (id.), basically parmenidean aletheia and Anaximander’s apeiron.

The narrative in the second half turns toward scientist-socialists who work on genetic projects: “’You eliminate the random, you rule the world,’ said Marcus simply. ‘Why stick to octogenes? One could program every step in the development of an organism: reproduction, food habits, life expectancy’” (283). This program generates quite a bit of resistance by the conclusion, wrapped up with “the patenting of living organisms” (395), which I initially misread as the “parenting of living organisms”—and of course the genetic engineering of a perfectly controlled organism by scientist is exactly what all of the fuss has been with traditionalist’s failure in canalizing his sons into traditionalism. The commentary is plain, but not tendentious. The parallelism between the parenting and patenting plots is overall very well done.

That said, the genetically engineered creature is also a nifty little thing from Anglo-American philosophy, Quine’s ‘gavagai’—which might be a rabbit, as ostensibly identified by the illiterate tribespersons, but also, conceivably, might be a collection of undetached rabbit parts, or one of many rabbit temporal phases, depending on how tribesperson conceives the signified internally to go with the signifier that we translate facilely as mere ‘rabbit.’ Here, the parallel is substantial:

Because, if it can be argued that the animal under experimentation is owned by any group of people, i.e., it is not a cat but effectively an invention with catlike qualities, then that very cleverly and very dangerously short-circuits the work of animal rights groups and leads to a pretty fucking scary vision of the future. (395)

Thereafter, “surely the mouse in this case is a symbol” (401). I fell in love with author, however, when she described how this (somewhat ‘extremist’) animal rights group began as student radicals, idealist, passionate, “but political infighting, back-stabbing, and endless factionalizing soon disillusioned them as far as the fate of Homo erectus was concerned” (396), and the charismatic qualities of the leaders attracted “political drifters” (id.). This is of course alleging that this type of misanthropic animal rights activism is the progressive wing of lumpenized antisocial nihilism.

The author has good comedic timing (e.g., fundamentalist book-burner who advises “you don’t have to read shit to know that it’s blasphemous” (194), or the great bit that reveals how the fundamentalist is always already structured by its antithesis, channeling Goodfellas: “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a Muslim” (369)). She also possesses a committed perspective, an enviable cosmopolitanism, and is about as charming as can be.

Recommended for readers who are independent, even of gravity, persons whose bodies are keeping dark secrets from them, and those who, simply put, fuck their sisters.

Tangled intimacy on an expansive scale. Cultural dissection and exploration.

Involved. At least that was the right word, Alsana reflected, as she liftes her foot off the pedal, and let the wheel spin a few times alone before coming to a squeaky halt. Sometimes, here in England, especially at bus-stops and on the daytime soaps, you heard people say “We’re involved with each other,” as if this were a most wonderful state to be in, as if one chose it and enjoyed it. Alsana never thought of it that way. Involved happened over a long period of time, pulling you in like quicksand. Involved is what befell the moon-faced Alsana Begum and the handsome Samad Miah one week after they’d been pushed into a Delhi breakfast room together and informed they were to marry. Involved was the result when Clara Bowden met Archie Jones at the bottom of some stairs. Involved swallowed up a girl called Ambrosia and a boy called Charlie (yes, Clara had told her that sorry tale) the second they kissed in the larder of a guest house. Involved is neither good, nor bad. It is just a consequence of living, a consequence of occupation and immigration, of empires and expansion, of living in each other’s pockets… one becomes involved and it is a long trek back to being uninvolved.

Involvement in one way or another is what this entire book is about: individuals' self involvement, intimate involvement, social involvement, cultural involvement, etc. Broad themes are approached on personal levels. Smith uses her characters' relationships to discuss the issues of religious and cultural differences, ideological conflict, racism, nationalism, class-ism, and sexuality, all in an English prism.

Smith's writing is generally entrancing, quick, and sharp. Her style is not romantic, it is unvarnished and blunt, but it also can ramble delightfully on down the chasm of a character's mind - I recognize this type of chaotic, off-the-rails thought process as something I myself am prone to, especially in times of stress, and for this reason I have a special appreciation for these often dark leaps and tangled asides. Smith's dialogue is often word fencing between characters, but it's not passionless clever wit, quite the opposite, the reader gets a great sense of the emotion imbued in each of the character's words.

Our characters are numerous, but predominantly the reader is following the lives of two families of mixed cultural and national backgrounds and all are unique and yet products of their histories alike. Often I found myself despising some of the individual's decisions or turns, but understanding them, much like if they were members of your own family.

My only complaint comes from the times in the book where things are being brought together, buttoned-up as it were, these parts seemed forced, as if Smith is attempting to be too clever at the expense of the story. Not every individual story-line has to come together in a tidy bow, and neither does a title have to be a theme craftily/forcibly sprinkled/shoved in a dozen different literary orifices (slight pet peeve). These slight annoyances are forgivable in light of the beautifully written remaining 99%.

Other themes include: aborted/failed life ending (whether that be homicide or suicide), genetic engineering, fry-ups, loveless(?) marriages, coin flipping, and Niece-of-Shame!