White Teeth

I just finished reading White Teeth, and my gosh. Zadie Smith has done it again, and by that, I just mean she’s done it because this was her first book. I always meant to read it, and I finally did. 

White Teeth was published in 2000, which was essentially still the 90s. Zadie Smith and the book got tons of attention at the time - she was quite young (still in her 20s) and a critically acclaimed first novel by a young author is always a big deal. Not long after it was published, I remember reading a blurb that described the book as a novel about a multicultural group of young people coming of age in London. That is not an untruthful description, but it’s a very incomplete one. White Teeth is about almost everything - family, sex, love, friendship, war, politics, history…it’s about the end of the British Empire and the history of 20th century England from World War II to Margaret Thatcher. 

*****

Every generation has some conflict with the generations before and after. Well, except Generation X because we are not out here looking for drama. Let the Millennials fight it out with the Boomers and Gen Z, and leave us out of it. Don’t start none, won’t be none - that’s our motto. 

Multilayered generational conflict is interwoven throughout White Teeth. Longtime friends Samad and Archie, who fought in World War II, both marry women a generation behind them. And so Millat and Magid (Samad) and Irie (Archie) are really young enough to be their fathers’ grandchildren, and are far removed from the England of the war years. Meanwhile, Archie’s wife Clara and Samad’s wife Alsana are the middle of three generations and torn between their native lands (Jamaica and Bangladesh, respectively) and their homeland, England. Samad doesn’t really consider himself English and in fact, he remembers Bangladesh when it was still India. It’s a lot. 

But it’s not all. Add in the scars of World War II and the beginnings of global radical Islam and the supreme arrogance of scientists who don’t distinguish between what can be done and what should be done, and you have a veritable ticking time bomb. 

Every character in this book has a distinct and complex personality - furious Samad, fierce and long-suffering Alsana, awkward Irie and her white father Archie and Black Jamaican mother Clara, Samad and Alsana’s twin sons Millat and Magid, the ridiculous but monstrous Chalfen family. And they all have a reason for being. The book needs every one of them. 

*****

I read novels for the characters more than the story, but White Teeth does not neglect one at the expense of the other. Something happens on almost every page, and reading it feels like reading Dickens, when there’s sheer joy in turning the page to find out what happens next. Fittingly, the book ends on New Year’s Eve 1999. Technically, 2001 was the first year of the 21st century, but the transition from 1999 to 2000 was really the end of the 20th century, and the 20th century is practically a character in White Teeth. It might be the main character. 

*****

I have at least three more Zadie Smith novels to catch up on, and then I’ll have read everything she’s published; in book form, at least. I’m hoping to read all of them this year. Stay tuned.