Book Review: White Teeth by Zadie Smith

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For book 7 of the year, I had a read something written by a female author. I chose White Teeth by Zadie Smith. It's a story focusing on two families in South London. The main events take place across
20 years (with a few time jumps to World War 2) and involve several generations of the families. Themes such as religion, identity and family are explored without any author prejudice. Smith uses her characters to highlight the struggles of cultural integration. This is achieved powerfully through humour and honesty. Smith dissects and analyses ideas without propagation. The book showcases inner city struggles during a tense period of time in London where social changes were huge.

White Teeth was Zadie Smith's debut and it was met with critical acclaim. Here's my quick breakdown.

WHAT I LIKED:

Zadie Smith's writing style flowed. I loved how nonchalantly she described London and I identified with a lot of her depictions of the old city. She injected a lot of humour into the story, making the darker moments more striking. Her characters were authentic. I knew them, and felt I could have had conversations with them. I shouted at Samad Iqbal's character constantly. His hypocrisy was infuriating at times, but I guess my emotions represent a good character.

Her depiction of the difficulties of cultural integration and identify was powerful. I felt sympathy for some characters and utter distain for others. My own views on identity came into play. Any book that gets its reader feeling and thinking, as Smith does in White Teeth, is a great piece of literature.

The fear of cultural assimilation from the Iqbal's and the ignorance toward it from the Jones' was explored well. Just seeing the two families have such different core views but be so close depicted modern London.

WHAT I DISLIKED:

Length, length and length. The story is 560 pages and I did feel there was a lot of surplus narrative.

WOULD I RECOMMEND?:

Smith's writing is easy to read. Her words roll across the page, which helped with a book that was too long. The characters are interesting. The themes that underpin the story are woven with skill. This book has grown on me massively. Initially, probably due to length, I would have recommended Smith but not this book. However, with time, I wholly recommend this book. I've even got a few colleagues at work into it.

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allthingsm4tt

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