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A review by theeditorreads
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
5.0
Synopsis:
Samad and Archie are two wartime buddies, since 1945, who are as thick as friends can be. Friends who have fought or not and got out of the War with their mind and body intact. White Teeth is their story as well as the story of their better-halves, whose ages are less than half their ages respectively and their children, the future generation. But, but, but, it gets even more interesting because it is not simply a story, rather a clash of cultures, of races, of generations, of the very history of their existence. And yet in the middle of it all, the fast friendship of an Englishman and a Bangladeshi survives and thrives.
Review:
I bet you have seen a family tree (this also has one, or two) once in your life. Consider this book a story of not only two generations, but their respective pasts and futures as well. It is the first novel I’m reading by [a:Zadie Smith|2522|Zadie Smith|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1478188567p2/2522.jpg] which is also her debut novel. It is divided into four parts of five chapters each concerning the two men and their children.
Set in Willesden Green, it starts with forty-seven-year-old loner Alfred Archibald ‘Archie’ Jones, who’s committing suicide on the morning of 1 January 1975. Gladly, he’s stopped by Mo Hussein-Ishmael who owns and runs a halal shop nearby. Gladly because he soon marries nineteen-year-old Clara Iphigenia Bowden and realises that there was a life for him after all the bitterness of his first marriage. Though a White man marrying a Black woman came with its own set of teething problems. Especially when she has her own past to contend with.
The book may have started out on a grim note but that didn’t stop the omniscient narrator from getting a laugh, or a hundred, out of me before the first chapter even got over. I will call it the magic of Smith’s prose and coupled with her humour, which goes from the sarcastic to the sublime, this made for a long but fun read (long because of the tiny font which made me want to throw the book).
The author seamlessly merged the history with the present, whether it be the War, the colonial history, interracial unions, etc. After all, the Bowdens are Jamaicans, forty-nine-year-old Samad Miah Iqbal (Ick-ball) is Bangladeshi (who’s pronounced as such and always mistaken for an Indian), and of course the English people, particularly the Chalfens who are introduced later in the story.
Prior knowledge of the areas in and around Willesden would make reading it more meaningful, even though it didn’t take away anything from the story. Archie and Samad’s strong friendship spins off into Clara and Alsana’s contrasting one with Alsana’s niece, Neena, acting as the buffer.
The story goes from 1975 to 1999 but also goes back to 1945 and further back to even 1857 (like I said, family tree matters! Lol). In all these years, there came Irie, Archie and Clara’s daughter and Magid/Millat, the twin sons of Samad and Alsana. And of course, the narration traverses through their growing up years, their ‘worthless’ friends, the struggle between two generations, of being brought up in different countries following different cultures which even inclusiveness couldn’t manage to unite, coupled with Samad’s mid-life crisis which even leads to a separation of the twins at an early age.
Not only between a husband and a wife but the entire story boils down to an age-old conflict between religion and science, the modern and the vintage, of extremism and liberalism. The story is anything but age-old though, with its dramatic overtones and loud inflexion. This story has received quite the mixed reviews but I won’t call it a classic, per se.
Before this one, I had only read The Namesake. That too was a story of two generations, about the longing one feels for one’s culture that seems to be lost in a foreign land, the longing which the second generation finds it hard to empathise with. But that is where the similarities end since the way of the narration of this one as well as the writing kept me hooked. While that was based in the USA, White Teeth is based in the UK; while the former had Indians settled abroad, this one had Jamaicans and Bangladeshis.
P.S. In the end, it gave me the knowledge of some of the choicest of swear words in Bengali (I’m of the Indian variety), whose Punjabi/Hindi counterparts have graced my ears over the years as I have made Delhi my home. There’s also a monologue by Irie Jones which I’ll be sharing shortly, my favourite part of the story. I borrowed a paperback copy from the Sahitya Akademi Library.
This is also my entry for Prompt 23 of the Reading Women Challenge 2018: The book that has been on your TBR the longest.
Originally posted on:
Shaina's Musings
Samad and Archie are two wartime buddies, since 1945, who are as thick as friends can be. Friends who have fought or not and got out of the War with their mind and body intact. White Teeth is their story as well as the story of their better-halves, whose ages are less than half their ages respectively and their children, the future generation. But, but, but, it gets even more interesting because it is not simply a story, rather a clash of cultures, of races, of generations, of the very history of their existence. And yet in the middle of it all, the fast friendship of an Englishman and a Bangladeshi survives and thrives.
Review:
I bet you have seen a family tree (this also has one, or two) once in your life. Consider this book a story of not only two generations, but their respective pasts and futures as well. It is the first novel I’m reading by [a:Zadie Smith|2522|Zadie Smith|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1478188567p2/2522.jpg] which is also her debut novel. It is divided into four parts of five chapters each concerning the two men and their children.
Set in Willesden Green, it starts with forty-seven-year-old loner Alfred Archibald ‘Archie’ Jones, who’s committing suicide on the morning of 1 January 1975. Gladly, he’s stopped by Mo Hussein-Ishmael who owns and runs a halal shop nearby. Gladly because he soon marries nineteen-year-old Clara Iphigenia Bowden and realises that there was a life for him after all the bitterness of his first marriage. Though a White man marrying a Black woman came with its own set of teething problems. Especially when she has her own past to contend with.
Ryan’s freckles were a join-the-dot enthusiast’s wet dream.
The book may have started out on a grim note but that didn’t stop the omniscient narrator from getting a laugh, or a hundred, out of me before the first chapter even got over. I will call it the magic of Smith’s prose and coupled with her humour, which goes from the sarcastic to the sublime, this made for a long but fun read (long because of the tiny font which made me want to throw the book).
The author seamlessly merged the history with the present, whether it be the War, the colonial history, interracial unions, etc. After all, the Bowdens are Jamaicans, forty-nine-year-old Samad Miah Iqbal (Ick-ball) is Bangladeshi (who’s pronounced as such and always mistaken for an Indian), and of course the English people, particularly the Chalfens who are introduced later in the story.
Clara went as red as black people get and looked at the floor.
Prior knowledge of the areas in and around Willesden would make reading it more meaningful, even though it didn’t take away anything from the story. Archie and Samad’s strong friendship spins off into Clara and Alsana’s contrasting one with Alsana’s niece, Neena, acting as the buffer.
The story goes from 1975 to 1999 but also goes back to 1945 and further back to even 1857 (like I said, family tree matters! Lol). In all these years, there came Irie, Archie and Clara’s daughter and Magid/Millat, the twin sons of Samad and Alsana. And of course, the narration traverses through their growing up years, their ‘worthless’ friends, the struggle between two generations, of being brought up in different countries following different cultures which even inclusiveness couldn’t manage to unite, coupled with Samad’s mid-life crisis which even leads to a separation of the twins at an early age.
…you go back and back and back and it’s still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.
Not only between a husband and a wife but the entire story boils down to an age-old conflict between religion and science, the modern and the vintage, of extremism and liberalism. The story is anything but age-old though, with its dramatic overtones and loud inflexion. This story has received quite the mixed reviews but I won’t call it a classic, per se.
Before this one, I had only read The Namesake. That too was a story of two generations, about the longing one feels for one’s culture that seems to be lost in a foreign land, the longing which the second generation finds it hard to empathise with. But that is where the similarities end since the way of the narration of this one as well as the writing kept me hooked. While that was based in the USA, White Teeth is based in the UK; while the former had Indians settled abroad, this one had Jamaicans and Bangladeshis.
P.S. In the end, it gave me the knowledge of some of the choicest of swear words in Bengali (I’m of the Indian variety), whose Punjabi/Hindi counterparts have graced my ears over the years as I have made Delhi my home. There’s also a monologue by Irie Jones which I’ll be sharing shortly, my favourite part of the story. I borrowed a paperback copy from the Sahitya Akademi Library.
This is also my entry for Prompt 23 of the Reading Women Challenge 2018: The book that has been on your TBR the longest.
Originally posted on:
Shaina's Musings