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 … 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.
more
I remember reading this book in my early 20s while I was travelling around the US in a old, battered Chevy van that my boyfriend and I had bought from 2 Swedish au pairs in Las Vegas. We travelled down the west coast and would pull into campgrounds that backed onto the ocean and I would climb on top of the Chevy’s roof, put down a towel, and just …
Award-winning author Zadie Smith “introduces Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, an essayist for The New York Times Magazine and tells us why her work is so important today.”
http://www.elle.com/culture/books/a37177/zadie-smith-on-rachel-kaadzi-ghansah/
LOVED it!!!
This book is pure explosive creativity. Hilarious, brilliant, and profound, it’s solidly one of my favorite novels of all time.
I really wanted to like this book. Everyone else gave it great reviews…but 100 pages into the story I was still struggling to get onboard, so I put it down. Wondering if you have to be British to appreciate it.
Epic story of immigration in Britain. Wonderful, complicated, often infuriating characters. Simultaneously heartbreaking and hilarious.
The characterization and dialogue alone…
Lots underlined, but a few favorites:
“No white knight, then, this Archibald Jones. No aims, no hopes, no ambitions. A man whose greatest pleasures were English breakfasts and DIY. A dull man. An old man. And yet…good. He was a good man. And good might not amount to much, good might no light up a life, …
Absolutely loved it. Definitely in my personal Top 20 list.
Zadie Smith’s White Teeth is a multi-layered, thought-provoking and extremely funny novel that tackles timely and sensitive topics with a rare, nuanced touch. Archie Jones is the archetypical Everyman-a working-class man with low ambitions and a seemingly simplistic view of the world. As White Teeth opens, he is on the edge of a successful …
Lives of real people laid bare, funny and embittered.
I was pretty disappointed with myself that I didn’t like this more than I did. I’d been looking forward to reading it but when I did found it a struggle to get through. That may be because I do not have much time in which to read and found this over long and too wordy with not a strong enough plot to capture my imagination and drive me on to want …
The plot was a bit ridiculous, but the dialogue more than made up for it. Had me laughing out loud almost from beginning to end.