White Teeth

This book has always hit the trifecta for me—interesting, moving, and funny. A story about London immigrant families in the ‘80s and ‘90s, it shows a lesser-known side of society and certainly is the raunchiest book in my list—there’s a lot of sex among its confused screw-ups.

I admit my mind was opened, and my sympathies widened by this book, and after re-reading, I can appreciate it as a masterpiece of comic chaos. I wouldn’t want to be these characters—how many books begin with a failed suicide attempt?—but I’m glad they let me into their lives.

First off, I must admit I’m a bit embarrassed it took me so long to finally read this literary gem!

I knew I would love Zadie Smith’s White Teeth within the first few sentences. I’m a fan of the candid wit of Brits and loved how imaginative and biting Smith’s storytelling is throughout. There was a freshness in engaging with characters who were flawed, inappropriate, and messy – yet they had such a strong desire for defining and owning their identity, I found myself relating to and forgiving their preposterous behavior.

As a mixed-race woman of color, I could feel… show more.

I often lean toward non-fiction, but I also enjoy the diversion of a good novel. This was Smith’s debut work and one I had not read, but in anticipation of her newest book I thought I should give it a try. It was well worth it.

This kaleidoscopic portrait of immigrant London never dragged. It stimulated so many interesting thoughts about genetics, race, identity, and how they do and don’t matter. 

As someone who believes good questions are better than answers, the questions that this book posed were incredibly thought-provoking and helped me to look at the world differently.

Maybe I just want to have a drink with Zadie Smith. She could tell me how she managed to write such a breathtaking novel by the age of 23. In this fictional encounter, I’d ask her about O’Connell’s, the pub in White Teeth frequented by her constantly put-upon war vets Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. “O’Connell’s is the kind of place family men come to for a different kind of family. Unlike blood relations, it is necessary here to earn one’s passion in the community; it takes years of devoted fucking around, time-wasting, lying-about, shooting the breeze, watching paint dry—far… show more.

I learned a lot from reading this book. The scene with the ammonia and the hair falling out; and then pulling out the extensions…I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it for years. It’s so sad. I am a huge fan of Zadie’s. I even love the books she hasn’t written yet.

This is a polyphonic narration of London, witnessing contemporary urban everyday language and identity practices. Zadie Smith completed her (debut) novel in her final year at Cambridge, after an auction for the rights was won by Hamish Hamilton (currently part of Penguin Random House), based on a partial manuscript.

Recent trends in language studies have produced a human turn in research to make sense of present—intricate, transnationally connected and dynamic—complexity, problematizing the countability and representability of cultures, languages, and identities as single entities. This book offers a glimpse of the type of languaging which naturally emerges in spaces inhabited by… show more.

In his review of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, the critic James Wood coined the term “hysterical realism” to describe novels in which “stories and sub-stories sprout on every page.” My immediate response to that description? “I want to write a book like that!”  

Although I soon realized, after reading the rest of Wood’s review, he meant the term as a criticism of Smith’s novel, my desire to write that sort of book, one with an abundance and exuberance of narrative, was reinvigorated by reading the text itself. White Teeth is at once hilarious and heartbreaking, outlandish and grounded, a… show more.

Zadie Smith published this novel when she was only twenty-five, a fact that fills me with envy and awe—it’s too good to have been written by someone so young! I first met it when I was about the same age, have returned to it many times, and only love the book more each time I read it. The voice is big and daring and outrageously funny. The characters are real in both the loveliest and cringiest of ways. The novel spans centuries and at least three continents, but what I love most about the book is its verve: you never… show more.

London is one of the great melting pots of the world and perhaps no novel describes its diversity with the verve of White Teeth. Here we see many families, Asian, Jewish, and inter-racial, try to make their way forward together and separately. The barriers they face are the result of both bigotry and all too human internal flaws. When I think of White Teeth, I am reminded that prose can leap off the page when done expertly and that for me, ironic comedy is the ultimate expression of the human condition.