Bibliofreakblog

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

I’ve met famous writers before.  I chatted with Robert Pinsky about the University of Michigan.  I asked ZZ Packer why she uses her initials.  I talked to Amy Tan about photography.  I questioned Sandra Cisneros about how she feels about sometimes being labeled a Mexican writer in certain anthologies.  So in retrospect, it is surprising that when I met Zadie Smith, I could only stammer, “Oh wow!  I think you’re really great!  You’re my favorite!”  I say in retrospect because at the time I was obviously just too floored to think straight.  And while I love love love her other two books, The Autograph Man and On Beauty, to me her debut novel, White Teeth, is what it is all about.

White Teeth is the story of two…maybe three families and the relationships they have within themselves and each other.  Smith says that she based the main family on her own parents upon discovering that they’d met at a party because she just couldn’t picture it.  That would be Archie and Clara Jones, in the book.  Archie is a WWII vet from the British army and Clara is the daughter for a Jehovah’s Witness Jamaican.  They have one daughter, the low self-esteemed Irie. 

Family number two is the Iqbals, from Bangladesh.  Samad and Archie were war buddies and have now reconnected since Samad’s move to the UK.  He has twin boys, Magid and Millat with his young wife, Alsana.  Magid grows up not-so-Islamic in Bangladesh and Millat becomes an extremist in London. 

The Chalfens are the third family, of Jewish-Catholic background (products of such marriages my Jewish friends like to call Cashews), who are both blindingly smart and increasingly dumb.  Marcus, the father, is a geneticist, whose work is opposed by Millat and his crew.   His son Josh is also opposed to this work on behalf of the mice used in experiments, while his mother Joyce ignores him and loves everyone else.

The lives of everyone interwine in such profound and disturbing ways it is hard to give a proper idea of it without giving too much away.  It is a strange, comical journey the reader must take on his own.  So instead I will provide a snippet to wet the appetitie of said reader, whilst trying to illuminate some of these relationships and giving a flare for Smith’s prose:

So.  First came the musical chairs living arrangements, as everybody shifted one place to the right or left.  Millat returned at the beginning of October.  Thinner, fully bearded, and quietly determined not to see his twin on political, religious, and personal grounds.  “If Magid stays,” said Millat (De Niro, this time), “I go.”  And because Millat looked thin and tired and wild-eyed, Samad said Millat could stay, which left no other option but for Magid to stay with the Chalfens (much to Alsana’s chagrin) until the situation could be resolved.  Joshua, furious at being displaced in his parents’ affections by yet another Iqbal, went to the Joneses’, while Irie, though ostensibly having returned to her family home (on the concession of a “year off”), spent all her time at the Chalfens’, organizing Marcus’s affairs so as to earn money for her two bank accounts (Amazon Jungle Summer ‘93 and Jamaica 2000) often working deep into the night and sleeping on the couch.
            ”The children have left us, they are abroad,” said Samad over the phone to Archie, in so melancholy a fashion that Archie suspected he was reciting poetry.  “They are strangers in strange lands.”
           “They’ve run to the bloody hills, more like,” replied Archie grimly.  “I tell you, if I had a penny for every time I’ve seen Irie in the past few months…”
            He’d have about ten pence.

I had to stop myself just then from quoting the next couple of paragraphs, because it gets so good. 

Smith is both witty and straightforward in her writing style, but not to the detriment of the plot, or the discovery of plot elements (everyone wants a surprise, after all).  And when I mean straightforward, I do not mean dull or unintelligent.  I mean that she doesn’t get carried away with her own words, a habit of so many first-time novelists. 
Buy White Teeth on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
Howards End by E.M. Forster
The Girls of Rihadh by Rajaa Alsanea
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon
Brick Lane by Monica Ali
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
The Corrections by Jonathon Franzen
Zadie Smith: Critical Essays edited by Tracey L. Walters
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer
In the Driver’s Seat by Helen Simpson
Girl by Blake Nelson 
Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding

Other works by Zadie Smith:

Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays
The Autograph Man
On Beauty 
Piece of Flesh 
The Book of Other People