Details
Synopsis
An Englishman, Archie Jones, and a Bengali Muslim named Samad Iqbal, who first met after World War II in Turkey, encounter each other again 30 years later in the North-West London neighborhood where they live with their families. The daughter of Archie and his Jamaican wife falls in love with Samad's radical fundamentalist son. Archie's sister-in-law is a fervent Jehovah's witness. Samad is plagued by guilt over his affair with his children's schoolteacher. And a nearby Jewish family tries to interfere in their lives. In a stew of often competing multicultural elements, Archie, Samad, and their families struggle to find their identities amid the complexities of the 1970s. Zadie Smith calls her acclaimed novel "a utopian view" of race relations: "It's what it might be and what it should be and maybe what it will be." A New York Times "Editors' Choice" for one of the best books of 2000. Nominated in 2001 for a National Book Critics Circle Award.
| Size | | Length: | 448 pages | | Height: | 10.0 in | | Width: | 6.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.5 in | | Weight: | 27.2 oz |
Industry Reviews
"Smith will produce better, more concise fictions in the future, but, for now, her lack of narcissism, allied to her ability to weld together history and the heart, intellect and intimacy, mark her out as a writer of mighty potential."
Sandhu
"Race and colonialism are just two of the weighty themes first-novelist Zadie Smith explores in WHITE TEETH. It's an ambitious, earnest and irreverent book about two North London families. It's also a bit of a chore to read, since Ms. Smith hasn't created characters who fully live, nor has she crafted a story with the narrative thrust needed to propel them, and the reader, forward. As the story unfolds, we learn about England's colonial past from the point of view of several of its multicultural citizens of the present. But instead of the teeming, comic randomness of a Salman Rushdie novel (an obvious influence), the collision of sensibilities and circumstance in WHITE TEETH feels flat. Ms. Smith has a real talent for comedy and a fond eye for human foibles. But her characters come off as well-intentioned puppets in the service of an ideological thesis rather than as real people, so the novel never gets going."
Hughes
"WHITE TEETH by the young British writer Zadie Smith, is not one of your typical small, semiautobiographical first novels. It's a big, splashy, populous production reminiscent of books by Dickens and Salman Rushdie with a nod to indie movies like MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE, a novel that's not afraid to tackle large, unwieldy themes. It's a novel that announces the debut of a preternaturally gifted new writer--a writer who at the age of 24 demonstrates both an instinctive storytelling talent and a fully fashioned voice that's street-smart and learned, sassy and philosophical all at the same time."
Kakutani
"Zadie Smith's debut novel is, like the London it portrays, a restless hybrid of voices, tones and textures....[A]side from a rather wobbly final quarter, Smith holds it all together with a raucous energy and confidence....There is more than virtuosity at work here. Smith likes her characters, and while she is alert to their shortcomings and blind spots, her generosity toward them never flags. That is why WHITE TEETH, for all its tensions, is a peculiarly sunny novel."
Quinn
"Clearly, Smith does not lack for powers of invention. The problem is that there is too much of it....At her best, she approaches her characters and makes them human; she is much more interested in this, and more naturally gifted at it, than is Rushdie. For a start, her minor Dickensian caricatures and grotesques, the petty filaments of this book, often glow....[H]er book lacks moral seriousness. But her details are often instantly convincing, both funny and moving. They justify themselves."
Woods
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