White Teeth

I'm not sure how I missed White Teeth when it was published in 2000. It seems to have garnered almost universal praise from critics and readers alike, and was turned into an acclaimed mini-series in Great Britain. White Teeth was the debut novel from Zadie Smith.

White Teeth has many characters, all of whom interact on a variety of levels, but at the heart of it all are Archie and Samad, friends who met during World War II who have continued to be friends. The novel jumps back and forth in time, focusing first on Archie, then on Samad, on Archie's daughter Irie, and then on Samad's twin sons Magid and Millat. The characters' lives are intertwined, allowing us to meet Archie's wife Clara and Samad's wife Alsana, both an entire generation younger than their husbands and with different views on the world. Archie and Samad are both, in their own ways, stuck in the post-war promise of England, and have trouble adapting to modern times and modern problems. Indeed, much of the plot revolves around the constant push and pull of the various traditionalists as they rub up against more modern times.

Their progeny further complicate things. Irie is an independent thinker with a strong pull towards a past that her mother would rather forget. Magid and Millat take different paths (due to an astonishing action by Samad) with Millat embracing the lifestyle of a young English hood and Millat sent off to the east to become a more traditional Bangladeshi Muslim. Needless to say, things don't really go as planned or anticipated for either Archie or Samad.

What makes this novel so memorable are the epic scope, the memorable characterizations, and the facility Smith shows with language and dialog from so many different types of characters. She seems to have mastered the nuances of both genders and of a number of nationalities. Thoroughly engaging and hard to put down, White Teeth is a fantastic novel.