- Paperback: 560 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd (25 July 2002)
- ISBN-10: 0141011068
- ISBN-13: 978-0141011066
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (226 customer reviews)
White Teeth
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Epic in scale and intimate in approach, White Teeth is an ambitious novel. Genetics, eugenics, gender, race, class and history are the book's themes but Zadie Smith is gifted with the wit and inventiveness to make these weighty ideas seem effortlessly light.
The story travels through Jamaica, Turkey, Bangladesh and India but ends up in a scrubby North London borough, home of the book's two unlikely heroes: prevaricating Archie Jones and intemperate Samad Iqbal. They met in the Second World War, as part of a "Buggered Battalion" and have been best friends ever since. Archie marries beautiful, buck-toothed Clara, who's on the run from her Jehovah's Witness mother, and they have a daughter, Irie. Samad marries stroppy Alsana and they have twin sons: "Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks."
Big questions demand boldly drawn characters. Zadie Smith's aren't heroic, just real: warm, funny, misguided and entirely familiar; reading their conversations is like eavesdropping. A simple scene, Alsana and Clara chatting about their pregnancies in the park: "A woman has to have the private things--a husband needn't be involved in body business, in a lady's ... parts."
Samad's rant about his sons--"They have both lost their way. Strayed so far from what I had intended for them. No doubt they will both marry white women called Sheila and put me in an early grave--acutely displays "the immigrant fears--dissolution, disappearance" but it also gets to the very heart of Samad.
White Teeth is a joy to read. It teems with life and exuberence and has enough cleverness and irreverent seriousness to give it bite. --Eithne Farry --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
She is . . . a George Eliot of multi-culturalism (Daily Telegraph )
The first publishing sensation of the millennium (Observer )
White Teeth reflects a new generation (Guardian )
The first publishing sensation of the millennium (Observer )
White Teeth reflects a new generation (Guardian )
[Zadie Smith] is one of the prominent voices of her generation
(Sunday Times ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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First Sentence
Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Amid all the hype- and counter-hype....the precocity of the author, accusations of 'emperor's new clothes'etc I was expecting this book to be kind of irritating. And to my amazement it wasn't irritating at all, in fact it was completely and utterly lovable. Most of the criticisms I have read seem fair - the rather too artificially constructed plot, inaccuracies or linguistic anachronisms, characters who are sometimes difficult to care for about... However, this didn't interfere with my enjoyment of this brilliant book. The observation is so original, the satire so spot-on, and above all the book has a real warmth: Smith actually seems to like her characters and to enjoy being in their company, something which sets her apart from writers like Rushdie or Kureishi who she is often compared to. The result is, of course, that the reader enjoys it too. There is a good joke on nearly every page, which is quite an achievement for a 540 page novel. Highly recommended.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is one of those books that'd be so much better if it was a third shorter. And that's just about where I finished it: a third from the end.
If you like character portraits though, this might be one for you. The story revolves around a number of characters and their relationships with each other. It deals with race, marriage, kids and the like. It also gives an interesting portrayal of the variety that is London.
But that's about it.
For my liking, the characters were described in too much detail. We get to know everything from how people met to their favourite colour and blood group, it seems. And although this is not such a travesty, the plot line does slow because of it - you start looking behind the sofa to find it again.
All this said, ZS does have a lovely writing style. No long show-off words for the sake of it. Just clear, east-to-read prose, which is nice. It's just too blinking long!
If you've got more reading stamina than me though and like books about people and their cultures, feel feel to disagree. The thousands of people reading it on the London Underground can't all be wrong. Can they?
25 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This massive first novel is both wildly ambitious and desperately in need of the hand of an assured editor. Smith certainly isn't afraid to stir such minor topics as race, colonialism, class, gender, culture, religion, fate, sexuality, history and science into her melting pot examination of identity, and as such, it's one of those books whose plot cannot be succinctly outlined. In the broadest possible terms, the book revolves around Archie and Samad, an Englishman and Bangladeshi respectively, who are in the same tank unit in World War II. After spending a goodly chunk of time on their wartime experience, the book covers both the next 45 years of their lives (lengthy stops are made in the late '60s, '70s, and '80s), and with the past (flashbacks are made to mid-19th century India and Jamaica). The true protagonists are Archie's daughter Irie, and Samad's twin sons, Millat and Majid. And the central theme of the book is their struggle for identity, which is sometimes unconscious and sometimes very purposeful.
One of the book's main flaws is that in addition to these five major characters, there are the mothers of each, and a veritable wagonload of important supporting characters, including a third family that appears well into the book. There's a lot of coming and going and coming, and on and on as characters assume central importance for ten pages, only to disappear for two-hundred. Smith is trying to weave a very complicated web (many critics call this aspect of the book "Dickensian"), but in doing so, the transitions become awfully jarring, and very often, annoying. A second major issue is that the characters are all types of one sort or another. Smith sets them in motion in order to comment on her grab-bag of issues, but never quite gives them enough individuality or humanity. The good thing is that she does manage to create a unique voice for each . Like Martin Amis, she's has an excellent ear for the rhythms of conversation and the specific vernaculars of both time and group. Similarly, she likes to play with language in a way that is both refreshing and assured.
On the whole, I liked this book-albeit grudgingly. Smith has taken a kind of "throw everything except the kitchen sink at the wall and see what sticks" approach, leaving no major issue unturned in her attempt to leave her mark on the reader. This means that a lot of the threads never lead anywhere, and thus the overall effect is not as strong as she might have intended. A good editor might have been able to pare some elements back a bit, allowing others to blossom more. Similarly, an editor ought to have helped with some of the many inaccuracies that crop up (two random examples: some of the portrayal of the Jehovah's Witnesses is factually incorrect, as are some of the details of Ryan's scooter). Still, as a portrait of multicultural London over the years and how the concept of "being British" has evolved in that time, it works quite well. And its questions about identity and belonging are applicable to immigrants coming to any Western country. The book was made into a 4-hour BBC miniseries, which has still never been released on video in the US.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
An irreverent romp through multi-cultural Britain
This is a big book with small ideas; but above all it entertains. Take a big collection of diametricaly opposed characters and mix them up in inter-connected (through friendship or... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mr. Ian Grant
Hard to get into
I'm sorry, but I really struggled to get into this book.
It's about 2 families (the Jones's and the Iqbals). Read more
It's about 2 families (the Jones's and the Iqbals). Read more
Published 3 months ago by J. Bowen
rollocking good read
White Teeth starts out laugh-aloud funny; Smith (at times) can equal John Kennedy Toole's classic 'Confederacy of Dunces' (transposed to Cricklewood from New Orleans). Read more
Published 3 months ago by sally tarbox
Really, Zadie?
As I said when I reviewed On Beauty, I was glad I hadn't yet read White Teeth so I didn't have to make the comparison. I was quite disappointed with this book. Read more
Published 3 months ago by S. M. HALL
Unsatisfied!
Ordered a new paperback, received what was clearly a used one, stains and all!
Very unhappy as it was intended as a Christmas present. Would not recommend.
Very unhappy as it was intended as a Christmas present. Would not recommend.
Published 4 months ago by dfullarton
A good read
This is a really good book. I read it years ago then lent it to a friend. I didn't get it back. I never learn! I'm looking forward to reading it again when I'm on holiday.
Published 8 months ago by S. L. DOLMAN
Don't risk dying before you've read this book!
Given my age (undisclosed) and as an English graduate I've read a lot of "great" novels in my time and this is one of the greatest books I've ever read! Read more
Published 9 months ago by James Lizard
A Subtle Study of Contemporary Multi-Cultural Britain
I first read White Teeth by Zadie Smith when it was published in 2000, and I was blown away by it. I read widely and yet I had never before come across anything as observant as... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Ms Zion Lights
Interesting oevre
Having re-read White Teeth I can recommend it as a thoroughly warm and engaging book.
What puts Smith above the rest is a prescient knowledge of what makes men and women... Read more
What puts Smith above the rest is a prescient knowledge of what makes men and women... Read more
Published 10 months ago by D. Smith
too long and too carelessly written
This book centres on the Jones, Iqbal, and Chalfen families. Archie Jones is a middle-aged white Englishman married to Clara, the black daughter of a Jamaican immigrant; their... Read more
Published 11 months ago by James
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