Rating: 
Summary: Creative, rollicking, and vast in scope
Review: Zadie Smith's remarkable debut novel shows depth, wit, and most of all, a genuine talent for storytelling. She tackles an important but somewhat timeworn theme--the immigrant experience and all the culture clashes it produces--and turns it into something original and memorable. Smith's ability to weave her characters' personal histories back and forth in time with such ease and aplomb proves that she is clearly a young writer to watch. Archie and Samaad, the two anti-heroes of the story, are flawed and at times, foolish men, but Smith portrays these characters with so much affection and gentle mockery that one cannot help but love them. This book crosses oceans, continents, and several generations, yet it never feels overblown or remote. Smith has an uncanny writer's gift of inviting the reader into the narrative with such intimacy that the obscure becomes the familiar. White Teeth has verve, wit, and panache. Smith's talent is formidable.
Rating:
Summary: A rich and ambitious work
Review: This is a multi-layered, multi-cultural novel about the lives of a couple of seemingly opposite friends and their families, spanning from the end of World War II to the nineties.Archie is a native Brit with a Jamaican wife and a stubbornly independent daughter. Samad (or Sam, as Archie calls him) is a Bangladeshi immigrant trying to make a good (and properly Muslim) life for his wife and twin sons in England. The story winds its way through their friendship from its odd beginning during the war, through the complicated events that befall their children and finishes with a bang-up ending that ties all loose ends neatly together, in the manner of Tom Wolfe. Smith succeeds in breathing life into all of her extremely disparate characters, and manages to write convincingly about WWII, genetics and the beliefs of Jehovah's witnesses, among many other wide-ranging subjects. All this in a first novel, written in her early twenties!
Rating: 
Summary: just tolerable
Review: There's some sparks and zangs but the premise is unrealistic and when I finished the book I didn't understand what the fuss around this book was about.
Rating: 
Summary: Ham Sandwhich on Rye
Review: In the novel White Teeth, Zadie Smith tackled a very difficult task of incorporating comedy into a very serious cultural clash. The booked is centered upon its two pillars, the egotistical, patronizing, pretentious, and condescending Samad Miah Iqbal and the soft spoken, non-confrontational, modest yet suicidal Archibald Jones. The two men come from completely different cultures, Samad being a Bengali Muslim, and Archie being a British Christian. As Samad and Archie go from the British Royal Military to north London their friendship stays strong. They each have their own complicated families which serve as the main characters in the book. Samad marries the over-bearing, opinionated, and out-spoken Alsana. They have identical twins Magid and Millat, who are both the same person yet so very opposite its increadible. Archie marries the beautiful, rebellious, and toothless Clara Bowden, a Jamaican immigrant and daughter of a die-hard and somewhat hysterical Jehovah's Witness, Hortense Bowden. Together, Archie and Clara have a daughter, Irie, a voluptuous, opinionated, and averagely intelligent girl. The beginning of the story works on bringing the characters together. It is careening with oddities and some of the most awkward matches and situations possible. Once both of the families are clearly established, the true genius of the book comes to light. Each character is developed into a complex jumble of emotion, conflict, love, and rebellion. Samad ships his eldest by two minutes and better son, Magid back to Bangladesh to become a religious profit gifted with the light of Allah. In doing so he created an enemy of Alsana until he returned. There second son, Millat, develops into a rebel of sorts. All of the girls are obsessed with him, he smokes pot incessantly, and he leads a gang of rough riders feared and respected throughout the youth of North London. As the development of his two sons strays further and further from what he intended, Samad believes himself to be a cursed Muslim and decides to devote himself to Allah forever. Archie continues in his non confrontational style for the whole book, while Irie and Clara constantly clash about nearly every issue that comes up. The families, alone and by themselves have enough issues to make a shrinks career. They then run into each other and even another family, the Chalfens, to create even more friendship, love, conflict, turmoil, and cultural clashing. The book unfortunately falls off a bit in my mind after of the conflict, drama, and commotion is clearly established. Smith rushes her characters into new developments completely inconsistent with their previously described and wonderfully thought out characters. Samad goes from powerful and handsome, to feeble and insignificant. Alsana then goes from a subservient wife to a spouse abusing wench worthy of any husband's fears. Millat goes from a popular leader to be followed, to a follower in Kevin, something that was so incongruous to his character that is really detracted from a reader's connection with him. These inconsistencies did not ruin the story, but they attacked Smiths credibility, this being a story based in the realm of reality. The only character that stayed consistent was Archie, though even he was a hard to gauge. We saw in the first seen of the book, his attempted suicide, and from that point on he is a submissive vegetable who offers a gentle opinion here and there. While the story holds up, its characters have difficulty doing so. Smith's trend of factional evolution of the characters was the strongest metaphor throughout the story. It began with Hortense Bowden and Ryan Topps committing their lives to Jehovah's Witness church. Then Millat went to KEVIN to act as a fundamentalist follower of some ridiculous approach on Islam. Then Joshua joined FATE mainly out of rebellion to his father. The message in all of this seemed to say that people have a need to associate with that seems to them as an important endeavor, their time has to be worth something. In assuring this for themselves, they often make decisions that would normally never even be considered. While the messages are consistent, once again, it is not consistent with the story that Smith conjured in the opening hundred and fifty pages of the book. In all, this was a very interesting book with many twists and turns, some expected and some completely curve balled. I became easy at some points to connect and at others to be completely detached. When reading it, keep an open mind and don't search to hard for explanations and reasoning that you think you missed, chances are it isn't there. If you just move with the motion of the book it's an enjoyable read that will interestingly leave you wanting more (possibly because the ending was dismal and you need a better sense of closure).
Rating:
Summary: Epic, humorous, and thought-provoking
Review: "White Teeth", author Zadie Smith's first novel, is the generation-spanning story of two men - one British, one Bengali - whose friendship, career, and families depict an ongoing struggle of race, gender, and religion. Smith addresses global issues (the relationship of former colonies to their erstwhile rulers and of the working class to the middle class, religious fundamentalism, the tribulations of assimilation) as well as personal ones (marital relations, the complications of siblings, forgiveneness) with a voice that is intelligent and skeptical as well as sympathetic. The book's flaws are minor: occasional slow patches in the 450-page narrative, a (perhaps intentional, but still inappropriate in a novel of this length and scope) superficial treatment of the endgame. Its assets are recommend it to politicians, readers, and inhabitants of the world: it is an enjoyable read, and powerful in a deliberate, thoughtful way. The writing, reminiscent of a less flamboyant, more deliberate Tom Robbins, is an excellent counterpoint to the seriousness of the narrative, rendering the characters' struggles entertaining without trivializing them. The story, rich with its own history, intertwines modern issues with ancient ones, addressing the past and its inhabitants and our struggles to escape them. Ultimately, it points out, we are victims of a fallacy of the English language: "past tense, future perfect".
Rating:
Summary: Brush daily for white teeth
Review: This book is must read for any desi, african american, muslim, arab etc. minority. it's funny,insightful and tackles the awkwardness minorities encounter while trying to assimilate themselves into the English or American culture. I love the humorous situations that the characters find themselves in. and the worst part is knowing that i'm all too familiar with them!
I didn't understand the ending, but after a bit of thinking, i may have grasped it.
Rating: 
Summary: entertaining and poignant
Review: I very much enjoyed this book for its sometimes hilarious insight into a culture that seemed less familiar the more the story progressed. The characters are well drawn and engaging. Highly recommended both as an entertaining read and "real literature."
Rating:
Summary: cool
Review: still in the middle of it but i like it a LOT so far. writing is very witty and its a fun read. i'm not really sure where its going but the second generation is hilarious.
Rating:
Summary: for Big City dwellers only
Review: This book had a huge amount critical acclaim attached to it. Smith, herself, became a literary darling overnight it seemed. I actually didnt read this book until much later after that hype died down. I really only have one resounding feeling about the book - it is extremely hard to follow Smith's direction if you haven't live in a multi-cultural melting pot. I read reviews of people in middle America saying they didn't see what all the bother is about - and they wouldn't. Having said that, even if you don't see the bigger picture she is trying to convey, the general storyline falls short.
Rating:
Summary: A sign of great things to come
Review: As a writer, Zadie Smith deserves all of the accolades she receives. In writing "White Teeth," Smith brings together great prose, social savvy, a sense of humor, and encyclopedic knowledge of British colonial history, several religions, and pop culture. The result is an ambitious and often humorous novel about two generations of two socially marginal families (one immigrant, one racially mixed) in lower middle class London. The scope of the novel is epic, and Smith leaves no stone unturned as she undertakes a meaningful exploration of the lives of at least ten incredibly disperate characters who all suffer from the same fatal flaw -- a willingness to give up anything for a single (character-specific) principle. Despite its breadth, every detail in "White Teeth" ends up mattering, all roads lead to the same place, and I'm left wondering how a 23-year-old Smith had the wisdom and maturity to compose such a well thought out first novel. As a smart, witty, hip, detailed novel, "White Teeth" is the type of work that would normally blow me away. While I am incredibly impressed by Smith, I felt sometimes that "White Teeth" was a little long and that there were a few too many important characters. The story works, but the reader gets stretched so thin among the gaggle of scheming Londonites that it's hard to maintain sympathy for any of them. When I got to the last chapter and realized Smith had only 18 pages to resolve the tangled web she wove, I knew I was going to walk away a little disappointed. Still, this novel is a good read. It's thought provoking, yet entertaining. Deep, but accessible. "White Teeth" is not perfect, but it is definitely one of the best books of 2000. If you have a decent attention span and a lot of free time, you should give it a shot.
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