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Book Reviews Title White
Teeth Fiction-Net
Rating Buy It
From Amazon.co.uk - BUY
NOW! Cover
Story One of the most
talked-about fictional debuts of recent years,
'White Teeth' is a funny, generous, big-hearted
novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing
- among many other things - with friendship, love,
war, three cultures and three families over three
generations, one brown mouse, and the tricky way
the past has of coming back and biting you on the
ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous must-read of
a book. We
Say It's inevitable
that I'm going to mention the hype surrounding this
novel. The frenzy has been building in momentum to
such an extent that I was expecting nothing less
than very great things from Zadie Smith and her
first novel. All this is a bit of a shame -
because, had I not been expecting great things, I
would probably have thought it was a pretty good
book. As it is, I feel just a little let down. The
truth is, White Teeth could be fantastic but it is
undeniably flawed. When Zadie Smith
gets it right, she almost touches the feathery
fringes of perfection. The prose is eloquent yet
forceful. Often, she is able to nail an image, dead
centre. When this happens, it is as if nothing else
could have ever described that particular feeling
or situation. Also, the scope of the story is
massive - it touches on so many different subjects
and so much of history that the description of
'epic' is not used without foundation. The
settings, from wartime Russia to seventies London,
were described vividly. In short, it is an
unbelievably ambitious first novel. This is itself,
makes it worth a look. Unfortunately,
the ambitiousness of the book has also led to some
of its downfalls. It is too long. Because it had
been such a drawn out journey, I felt that a lot of
the book's impact was lost at the end. Some of the
characters are not convincing. I found the
middle-class Chalfen family extremely irritating
and difficult to believe in. It's an irony that,
because of the existence of the near-perfect
moments, the book suffers. It makes it more obvious
when Smith is getting it wrong. But don't be put
off - there's a lot to like and lot to learn in
White Teeth. Review by: Rachel
Taylor |
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