Book Review: White Teeth by Zadie Smith

White Teeth focuses on the later lives of two wartime friends - the Bangladeshi Samad Iqbal and the Englishman Archie Jones - and their families in London.

”Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.”

Well. This was disappointing. Luckily I was a huge fan of Zadie’s writing itself, and so I’m not ruling out trying her other books... which means @ab_reads has not disowned me.

In reality, this should have worked for me. I enjoy stories that span decades, that follow multiple people and families. But this narrative just felt a bit TOO all over the place, with too many characters and a number of different storylines that felt completely unrelated until too late in the book. Like yeah, everything ties together eventually, but it just felt ridiculous to me.

None of the characters were particularly likeable either. I don’t need to like the characters in order to enjoy a book, but in this instance it was really off-putting. Samad, in particular, I just could not stand. The only one who I was rooting for was Irie, and she just didn’t get enough page time!

On the upside, I learnt a LOT about Jehovah’s Witnesses! I found those parts incredibly interesting, as well as the mixture of all the different cultures and religions. Smith’s writing and commentary is so witty and clever, I laughed out loud on a few occasions. So hey, it wasn’t all bad?

Overall, just not for me. I felt like it tried too hard! 2.5 stars.

Johann

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