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A review by inherbooks
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
4.0
“…but the fact remains: full stories are as rare as honesty, precious as diamonds. If you are lucky enough to uncover one, a full story will sit on your brain like lead. They are difficult. They are long-winded. They are epic. They are like the stories God tells full of impossibly particular information. You don’t find them in the dictionary.”
✨
Here’s to one of the most familiarly chaotic fictional novels I’ve *ever* enjoyed. With a synopsis as simple as it is, I was hardly expecting a story filled with complicated, contradictory, frustrating and all the while loveable characters and lives.
Zadie Smith skimps on NOTHING – so much so that the world she built felt eerily familiar. i love that she didnt hold back on showcasing human complexity and the dichotomies that naturally exist in an individual, that a multi-dimensional person means containing parts that don't always complement, but actually contradict. our personalities and actions that follow are not linear, absolute, or even exclusive - we aren't all 'good', all 'bad', all 'nice', all 'brave', we are made up of parts that are revealed depending on how and where the pendulum swings at a given time.
I was left ping-ponging between the Iqbal’s and Jones’ family drama, state of the world, community, meaning of legacy, and mercilessness of immigration. Samad’s fears of losing his children to the West, Clara’s protest again religion, Archie’s indecisiveness and Alsana’s badassery all mixed in with a jumble of their kids, quirks, bad/better decisions, takes place over 30+ years. Whew.
Boiled down, they were individually at war with history - lived, written, spoken – and what the future holds (are we ready for it? how do we prepare? will there even be one? how do we stop the future from resembling what we left behind?)
the novel at first felt wordy + scattered – but once i got into the groove i couldnt get out. I did need to take breaks to let its somewhat heavy-handed prose (love!) sink in, and rightfully so - it's a heavy load that could only be lightened by time.
At just over 500-pages, it’s not a short read or a page-turner, but hilarious, outrageous, deeply resonated w me, and imo, a must-read.
✨
Here’s to one of the most familiarly chaotic fictional novels I’ve *ever* enjoyed. With a synopsis as simple as it is, I was hardly expecting a story filled with complicated, contradictory, frustrating and all the while loveable characters and lives.
Zadie Smith skimps on NOTHING – so much so that the world she built felt eerily familiar. i love that she didnt hold back on showcasing human complexity and the dichotomies that naturally exist in an individual, that a multi-dimensional person means containing parts that don't always complement, but actually contradict. our personalities and actions that follow are not linear, absolute, or even exclusive - we aren't all 'good', all 'bad', all 'nice', all 'brave', we are made up of parts that are revealed depending on how and where the pendulum swings at a given time.
I was left ping-ponging between the Iqbal’s and Jones’ family drama, state of the world, community, meaning of legacy, and mercilessness of immigration. Samad’s fears of losing his children to the West, Clara’s protest again religion, Archie’s indecisiveness and Alsana’s badassery all mixed in with a jumble of their kids, quirks, bad/better decisions, takes place over 30+ years. Whew.
Boiled down, they were individually at war with history - lived, written, spoken – and what the future holds (are we ready for it? how do we prepare? will there even be one? how do we stop the future from resembling what we left behind?)
the novel at first felt wordy + scattered – but once i got into the groove i couldnt get out. I did need to take breaks to let its somewhat heavy-handed prose (love!) sink in, and rightfully so - it's a heavy load that could only be lightened by time.
At just over 500-pages, it’s not a short read or a page-turner, but hilarious, outrageous, deeply resonated w me, and imo, a must-read.