White Teeth: A Novel | Zadie Smith

White Teeth: A Novel | Zadie Smith | A difficult read, but at times engaging

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White Teeth: A Novel

	White Teeth: A Novel Zadie Smith Vintage, 2001 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 354 reviews view larger image
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Zadie Smith?s dazzling debut caught critics grasping for comparisons and deciding on everyone from Charles Dickens to Salman Rushdie to John Irving and Martin Amis. But the truth is that Zadie Smith?s voice is remarkably, fluently, and altogether wonderfully her own.

At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England?s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn?t quite match her name (Jamaican for ?no problem?). Samad?s late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal?s every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith. Set against London?s racial and cultural tapestry, venturing across the former empire and into the past as it barrels toward the future, White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.

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White Teeth

I loved this book. It is sooo clever. A truly witty, engrossing read. The author is not afraid to go places where other writers might fear to tread. Five stars.

A difficult read, but at times engaging

I almost dropped this book half way through, but forced myself to go on and found that the second half was much better. It is at times engaging and witty, but at other times difficult to follow and even depressing in the description of some of the shabby lives of these people. I did not like the ending. So I enjoyed bits and pieces of it and suffered though the rest. Overall an OK book.

Fell short of my expectations

The start of this book intrigued me. I liked the writing and general atmosphere. I liked the multi-cultural background, and did enjoy seeing the world from Samal's eyes, a Bangladesh-born man living in England.The novel was funny and insightful, and my hopes were high for this book. Unfortunately, the more I read, the less interest I had. While the characters were interesting at first, they were not believable, nor particularly likeable. On top of that, there was not a plot that I could follow with interest. Yet in spite of those weaknesses, there continued to be small scenes that I did enjoy. This felt like a quality book that just just did not grab me.

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