“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.

The Year of Women--in which I'm devoting 2021 to reading female authors only--continues with my introduction to Zadie Smith and her debut novel White Teeth. Published in 2000, this is an acclaimed book I wanted to love and understand most of, in the way I'd love a badge for David Foster Wallace or Salman Rushdie. No book is for everyone, though. By the 10% mark, I had started skimming. By 20%, I surrendered. Smith's talent in language arts is evident opening this book up to any page and blindly pointing at any paragraph. What's absent is story, as well as a character who wanted something and had obstacles put in her way.

White Teeth is a novel I felt I could skip five pages without missing anything other than writing. Smith is as active as Simone Biles cartwheeling all over each and every page: inventive writing, colorful writing, bold writing, witty writing, triple axle writing. I was delighted initially, then reached a point where I wanted all that leaping around to stop and the story to start. I've enjoyed novels where the author pointed her writing out, reminded the reader they were reading a novel, but always because there was a compelling story. Smith writes about one character, and then another character, and then and then and then ... Wondering how this might've happened, I only had to research how old Smith was when she wrote this book. Case closed.

Zadie Smith was born in the working class suburb of Willesden in northwest London in 1975. Her mother emigrated to the U.K. from Jamaica in 1969 and married an Englishman thirty years her senior. Smith, who changed her name from Sadie to "Zadie" at fourteen, was fond of tap dancing and jazz singing but deemed writing to be a more attainable career path. She graduated from King's College, Cambridge with a degree in English, several short stories published in the college literary collection and a novel, White Teeth, which she was offered a six-figure advance on when she was 21. Its critical and commercial success made Smith an international literary sensation. She lives in Kilburn, London with her husband and two children.



Previous reviews in the Year of Women:

-- Come Closer, Sara Gran
-- Veronica, Mary Gaitskill
-- Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys, Viv Albertine
-- Pizza Girl, Jean Kyoung Frazier
-- My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
-- Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Fannie Flagg
-- The Memoirs of Cleopatra, Margaret George
-- Miss Pinkerton, Mary Roberts Rinehart
-- Beast in View, Margaret Millar
-- Lying In Wait, Liz Nugent
-- And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie
-- Desperate Characters, Paula Fox
-- You, Caroline Kepnes
-- Deep Water, Patricia Highsmith
-- Don't Look Now and Other Stories, Daphne du Maurier
-- You May See a Stranger: Stories, Paula Whyman
-- The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, Deesha Philyaw

ვაჰ, არ მეგონა ნამდვილად თუ ასეთი წიგნი მქონდა სახლში და რატომღაც ვარიდებდი თავს (კაიჰო, 848 ფურცლის გამო

This book starts with an attempted suicide on New Year’s Day, 1975, and the remnants of an End of the World party, where Archie meets his future wife, Clara, as both try to leave the past behind. It goes on to describe a long-lasting friendship between Archie Jones, a white Englishman, and Samad Iqbal, a Bengali, who met during their service in the British Army in WWII. While the war does not take center stage, it forms the basis of the friendship and establishes the foundation for the rest of the story. Archie and Samad end up living near each other in a working-class neighborhood of North London. The story branches out to their wives, Clara and Alsana, and their children, Archie’s daughter, Irie, and Samad’s twins Millat and Magid. It engages in many flashbacks to their families’ histories in Jamaica, Europe, and Asia. It takes a dramatic turn when two of the (by then) teenage children start spending time with the Chalfen family, intellectuals that speak of themselves in the third person and engage in scientific rationalist thought.

This book touches on a variety of serious themes, such as identity, immigration, race, ethnicity, social class, genetic engineering, faith, friendship, and fate, but are handled in a way that reads like a “slice of life” in an ever-diverse world. Smith’s style is a bit frenetic, with a good dose of cynical humor. The characters are well-developed and realistic, and the flashbacks to the past provide insight into their motivations. Smith is adept at describing differences in intergenerational and marital perspectives that lead to disagreements. She writes believable dialogue using authentic-sounding dialects. She goes down a few “rabbit holes” that had me wondering where it was all heading, but she brings it together superbly in the end.

Smith comments on what it means to be part of today’s modern society where globalization is the norm and people of many diverse backgrounds interact regularly. It also touches on traditions of the past and the desire not to lose cultural identity. It explores attempts at controlling the future and reveals them to be, largely, an exercise in futility. Some of the wildly disparate elements of this story include: a scientific project to genetically engineer a mouse, animal rights activists reacting to the mouse, the Jehovah’s Witness religion of Clara’s mother and ex-boyfriend, and a fundamentalist Muslim religion, Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islam Nation, adopted by Millat (“KEVIN?...We are aware that we have an acronym problem”). It seems appropriate that this book was published in 2000, in time for the new millennium. Recommended to readers of literary fiction and multi-cultural family sagas.

“Clean white teeth are not always wise, now are they?”

This is one impressive novel, easily one of the smartest novels I’ve ever read. I was bowled over by Zadie Smith’s perceptiveness. She writes incredibly authentic prose involving a huge range of characters, subjects, time periods and viewpoints.

Indecisive Archie, guilt-ridden Samad, angry Alsana, reckless Millat, careful Magid, long-suffering Irie … there are so many characters and they are all so specific, so real, so unique in what they obsess over, how they react, even the way they swear. She covers multiple generations, races, countries and harrowing situations, as if she’d lived as and through them herself.

There are so many themes, you could just sort of take your pick and read into this what you want. Religion? check. Multiculturalism? check. Family? check. Dentistry? check. Genetic engineering? check. The Godfather? Check. The list is endless.

There were parts I didn’t like so much: the beginning had a snarky tone, and the end felt overloaded with new characters and plotlines. But the majority of the book was mesmerizing: sharp, funny and insightful.

“Don’t you see, Abba? whispered Millat. That’s it. That’s the long, long history of us and them. That’s how it was.”

Una lettura impegnativa e stimolantissima suggerita nell'altrettanto stimolante bookclub animato da millennials a cui sono stato benevolmente ammesso.

Si rimane ammirati da quanto ha potuto produrre a vent'anni la Smith. Un libro ambizioso che centra con chirurgica precisione (l'ha pubblicato nel 2000) tante tendenze che si sarebbero conclamate nel ventennio successivo: i fondamentalismi religiosi, il rifiuto dell'autorità scientifica, il ripiegamento nella propria impotenza della (sedicente) borghesia liberal-progressista, la radicalizzazione delle seconde e terze generazioni di immigrati. Un paesaggio nel quale abbiamo imparato a muoverci che Zadie intravede con preveggente lucidità.

Facciamo un po' di mente locale: nell'ultimo decennio del ventesimo secolo eravamo lì tutti a festeggiare che il muro di Berlino era venuto giù, non c'erano più cattivi (l'11 settembre era di là da venire e ci si compiaceva vedere i russi bere coca cola), in Europa si iniziava a circolare a piacimento e fra poco si sarebbe avuta anche la moneta unica. Che vita comoda per la pacifica e ricca Europa.
L'unica preoccupazione era il baco del millennio che minacciava di rovinarci il nuovo trastullo con cui ci si iniziava a divertire.

Sappiamo com'è andata e la ventenne Zadie l'aveva già sgamato. chapeau.

Certo ho trovato molti difetti nell'organizzazione della gran mole di materia narrativa. Alcuni personaggi (Archie e consorte) vengono preannunciati in pompa magna, e poi quasi abbandonati, l'inciso della nascita dell'amicizia tra Samad ed Archie in un improbabile episodio della seconda guerra mondiale l'ho trovato un corpo estraneo, tutto sommato deleterio perchè comporta il fatto che entrino nel cuore dell'azione incontrando le anime gemelle (che potrebbero essere ampiamente figlie loro) e mettendo al mondo eredi a quasi 60 anni. Vabbè sospensione dell'incredulità, ma non serviva proprio.

Ma fosse stata capace di far quadrare tutto, avrebbe scritto un Underworld (che DeLillo ha scritto a 60 anni ,mentre la Zadie non ne ha neanche 50 oggi), per cui: brava così leggerò dell'altro.

En White Teeth, Zadie Smith trata con agudeza temas tan sensibles y discutidos como la inmigración y el nacionalismo. Racismo, crisis de identidad basadas en historia y tradición, lealtad hacia ideales tanto religiosos como humanos, fundamentalismo y un profundo y marcado anhelo de hallar un hogar en un mundo siempre ajeno a uno mismo son algunos de los elementos que componen White Teeth.

White Teeth empieza con la historia de dos familias de inmigrantes conviviendo en Inglaterra con culturas y creencias diferentes; los Iqbal, provenientes de Bangladesh, y los Jones, parte jamaicanos y parte británicos. Estas familias tratan de hacerse valer a través de sus respectivos pasados en una sociedad que no coincide con sus costumbres. Lo esencial en esto es que, a pesar de dichas diferencias, estas dos familias se relacionan entre sí sin mayores inconvenientes, hasta incluso encuentran pertenencia de forma cruzada.

Resumiendo, en su primera novela Zadie Smith ha sabido desarrollar una historia estupenda, con personajes complejos y entrañables, mucho humor, emoción e inteligencia, todo esto sin ignorar la escritura, que es magistral. Multiculturalismo y conexión humana en su estado más puro.

There need to be more books like this in the world. Little bit cocky, little bit sharp, written within my lifetime by someone with little to no representation in the halls of esteemed literature by means of race and gender and what have you and does not give a flying fuck about it. The setting may be the well worn island of merry old 20th century England for the most part, but the reality is that of the 21st. Smorgasbord where white men get as proper a representation in the wider plain of reality as demonstrated by their worldy demographic percentages, rather than the plague of pretense sludging its way out of the past and into modern day entertainment maintaining against all odds that women are objects and people of color haven't been invented yet? Yes please.

I've noticed a common tone of grimaces and smirks at the college days of dorm room philosophizing, BYOB's galore in the booze and bong and Bourdieu, and I have to say, why? Shell out thousands for tuition, break your back and brain on everything so that you may make a living and never live it for the rest of your days, so that we may scoff at and scorn the few moments youthful selves stretched out their mind out of their own true volition? For if that's your habitus, you're not going to like this book at all.

There's no college here, mind you, nor the slightest hint of academic satire beyond the teachers and the parents and the volcanic smoldering that is the thousands of fags smoked in every courtyard of a colonial workhouse turned school. Rather, there's that periodic expounding on the smaller things in view of the bigger and vice versa, the sociopolitical/cultural/religious -isms galore in tidbits between plot and character and the standard rest, enough that I've just gone back to shove that four star up to a dazzling five because fuck it, I'd have to read ten of the classics to get the amount of true and glorious angry pointing out the lies and filth and prejudice of our world, our times. You say Middlemarch, I say been there, loved that, but these days of mine are played to the tune of "It's a Small Cosmopolitan World After All", and ivory towers just aren't going to cut it any more, no matter how well intentioned or lucky in hotfooting it out of hell. Heard of the Bechdel Test? Try the variant for people of color, or perhaps the Mako Mori Test. True, the book didn't pass the Russo Test, but there's a reason why I'm on the lookout for more Zadie titles to grace my shelves.

Now, since one side of my family has been in area of the later named United States since the 1600's, while the other is claimed to have been wandering around since the 1500's by an especially fervent Great Aunt, my sense of being an immigrant is nigh nonexistent. Thus, I'm not going to do anything inane like compare this work to the likes of Lahiri and Kogawa and other variations in the theme and said that the way the subject was handled felt more or less real to me. However, if you couldn't tell by my rant above, Zadie seized on the true and utter consequences of the people perceived as other migrating to and living in the country of the "self" perceivers and got angry about it. The result is an admittedly hilarious and corkscrew escapade across a multivarious cast of at least four generations, but the righteous fury is there, enough that I'm amazed I haven't come across one of those reviews decrying it for being "too political" or whatever the term is for authors mixing their Entertainment with Truth.

Regarding said reviews, I have seen ones dismissing the characters as unsympathetic caricatures, bemoaning the conclusion, wielding hedge clippers at the plot, what have you. To that I say...ehh. It's been a while since my baseline lay along those particular lines, and seeing how this reading turned out niggling doubts and annoyance free, I'd say I'm the better for it.

i picked this up when i was living in manhattan, trying to keep up a trendy appearance on the subway. though it is one of a multitude of those cultural-fish-out-of-water stories that have grown so popular since about 2001, this one is supposed to have extra sass, because it is written by a british woman who is attractive (from what i've heard about her other book on beauty; i have never seen her).

anyway, this book became particularly annoying when she started talking about tank combat in ww2; i can't think of anything she is less equipped to describe. my feelings on zadie smith are similar to those expressed by tom berenger towards charlie sheen during the "underworld" scene in platoon.

this part is no joke: around the time i began to dread continuing with this book, my cat propitiously somehow got piss all over it, sealing my decision to never touch it again.

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.

Audiobook #212

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.