Customer Reviews

White Teeth

5 star:		(88)
4 star:		(54)
3 star:		(33)
2 star:		(20)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

A book about race and immigrant life in London, WHITE TEETH is one of the most fascinating reads I've come across in a long time. I'm attracted to novels set in different locales and those that venture into territory I'm not familiar with, so this novel was perfect for me. The author does a bang up job of incorporating just about everything into this novel: culture, technology, religion--all of it relevant to the story. The only other novel that did this for me was "Bark of the Dogwood" which also incorporated these things and actually compelled me to read it twice. I highly recommend WHITE TEETH for anyone interested in an incredible examinnation of the human spirit.

Yes, I understand that seems like a contradiction, but it was the exact feeling I had when reading this book. Tehre were so many stories and subplots and new plots getting introduced near the completion of the book. Suffice it to say I was greatly dissapointed with this read.

To give a summary, I am not even sure where to start. It actually did start out pretty strong. With tales of an old friends and their distinctions, I thought it would at least be a well thought out book about friendship. About a quarter of the way through, things take a turn for the worse and never really get back to the zealous and picturesque story telling that occured in the beginning. By time I was about 2/3 of the way away from completion, I couldn't wait to put it down. Because I always finish books, I stuck it out, but believe me it was a chore. There were a few moments of clarity where I thought things from the end would somehow tie into things for the beginning, but really that never happened. I mean in the end we find the entire basis of the book, the only redeeming quality of life long friendship, was a fallacy in the first place, and instead of expanding on this- even a little bit, the author just ends the book. I mean really, what was the point?

Serious themes, seriously meant and you just can't stop laughing.

That is, when you have a teeny weeny bit of insight into how it is for the first and second generation immigrants. If you have no idea what it's like, or take things too seriously then I can't say for sure if you're going to get all of the perspectives right in this one, which undoubtedly leads to missing all of the best jokes.

It's like being the fly on the wall as the wonderfully developed characters shuffle through the confusion of who they really are.

I have to say that I really enjoyed this book for the most part. I found it a really comfortable read and quite comical at points. However, it seemed to have a lot of careless editorial mistakes that kept distracting me. At one point, I am pretty sure she gets the twins confused and some of the dialogue didn't fit so well with the time period the story was supposed to be taking place in. Again though, I think these errors have to do with inexperience, (although I imagine the editor had slightly more, what went wrong?)

I also thought the ending was really weak, I loved the way she built up the characters and the action, but it all seemed to kind of flop around at the end.

Worth reading and I look forward to more in the future...

I both hated and loved this book.

First, I was amazed at the writing, and Zadie Smith's breadth of knowledge. She is obviously extremely talented. Unfortunately, these two things are not enought for me. If I hadn't had to read the book for a reading club, I would have never finished it, which brings me to to what I disliked about the book.

I hated the fact that I couldn't stand any of the characters; I didn't empathize with them. Perhaps this is because I am a white American, far removed from the London Zadie Smith writes of, but I doubt it. I don't think that she (the writer) likes any of her characters, except for perhaps Irie, the only character that actually develops during the course of the novel. At one point early in the book, I thought to myself that Zadie Smith must be a rather mean person to describe so many people so hatefully.

The thing I disliked most about the book was its unnecessary length. While the basic story was good, and even interesting, I often found myself wanting to skip through pages and pages to the next thing that moved the story forward. There were too many pointless dialogues and lengthy background passages.

WHITE TEETH's problem is less its story than Ms Smith's style, which reminded me immediately of Douglas Adams. But while the late Adams's constant authorial presence, leaning over the reader's shoulder to shoot acute observations at his characters, their plight or just plain LIFE, was perfect for his offbeat genre fiction, it is immediately grating in WHITE TEETH. The author lacks the wit (and, perhaps, life experience?) to make that style work, and it sits poorly with the suburban banality she seeks to ground the characters in. Frantically page-turning to see when Marvin the Paranoid Android showed up, I bailed at ~p.100, with no interest in the characters whatsoever.

There was a lot of hype about this book and I sat down with it looking for an intelligent, absorbing, old-fashioned good read.

Instead, I found a horribly over-written book about people and places that I could not warm up to no matter how I tried.
The world in this book is an ugly, lawless place filled with characters that become less and less endearing as the book goes on. I was looking forward to the ending as I'd heard that everything came together, but it did not in any meaningful fashion, and I was so relieved to finally finish it.

White Teeth fully qualifies as a refreshing as novel. . The characters are lively, identifiable and rich. I also found the dialogue to be rich, one of the reasons that kept the book interesting throughout the read. I was entranced as to what is coming next and kept on reading and reading until the last page.I also recommend The Usurper and Other Stories, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, The Line of Beauty,

Tedious at best! Just as a character begins to develop,
the author is off on another track. If you like lots of
flashbacks, bits and pieces of each character and have a
lot of time, then you may find the book interesting. The
potential was there, but the author apparently felt that
she would rather be "clever". A no vote for this one!

White Teeth is the debut novel from Zadie Smith, who penned the epic story at the age of 24. At over 500-pages, I'm probably not the first person to admit that it took me more than a few days to finish reading.

Have you ever read anything on speed reading? I've seen a few articles saying that if you read the first and last sentence of a paragraph, you should be able to get the gist of the entire paragraph, thus allowing you to speed through books.

White Teeth is not something you can speed read through. I'd like to see anyone try. Every single sentence in this book is crafted with such precision that it's hard to skip anything while attacking the pages. This is what made it so slow-going for me. Personally, I wouldn't want to skip over anything'speed reading or not'is the purpose of reading not to enjoy the comingling of words? Zadie Smith does a beautiful job of doing just that in this sprawling classic.

The story is about Archibald Jones, who starts off the novel by attempting suicide. He can't make a decision without flipping a coin. His friend, Samad, is a Bengali who works as a waiter. They met in the second World War and tell their stories, past and present, throughout the novel. There is humor mixed with sorrow, love mixed with religion, and the journey of two men and their families as they try to make their mark on the world, wading through the social chaos that makes up postcolonial England.

Smith's characters throughout White Teeth are varied, vocal, and make dramatic (and surprising) appearances. It just goes to show that everyone is connected in one way or another. The hilarity that ensues within the novel is at times vulgar, poignant, and real. Right when you're lost in the humor Smith sprinkles throughout, you can't help but also think about the issues of loyalty to family and loyalty to the traditions of heritage. Can they both be accomplished in the search to make your own identity?

My only qualm with White Teeth is that while there is a story going on, there are no major arcs or climaxes. There was no time during my read that I felt the page-turning urge to find out What Happened? The story is definitely a 'drama' of a novel'something you go through to meet the characters and witness their lives, not necessarily to be lost in intrigue and mystery.

It might not be for everyone, but White Teeth is a definite must-read. While you may want to push your way through the novel, eager to move onto your next read, adding White Teeth to your pile of classics-read, take your time. Move slowly through the landscapes, dialogue, and characters that Smith created. You don't want to miss a thing.