Rating: 
Summary: Fresh new talent makes excellent debut
Review: This excellent novel opens with Archie, a despondent middle-aged British man, about to kill himself with carbon monoxide in his car --- he is divorcing his wife Ophelia, whose family blames him for her madness. But Archie is saved, and a new life begins.Archie marries Clara, a 19-year-old Jamaican whose front teeth have been knocked out in her wild youth and looking to escape her Jehovah's Witness mother. They have a daughter named Irie, who must deal with being not black, not white, and not thin while growing up in London. Archie's friend Samad, from the trenches of WWII, is married to Alsana and they have twin sons. The novel covers Archie and Samad's friendship through the years, the friendship of their children, the problems of their wives (especially the loud and easily-angered Alsana), the twins' individual discovery of religion, and, of all things, a family project of genetically engineering a mouse. At its roots, the novel is about the mix of cultures and clash of personalities in London as the two families' lives merge throughout the decades.
Rating: 
Summary: That's entertainment....
Review: This is an interesting little book. The end is a bit of a let-down: you get the feeling the author could have gone on and on with these characters' lives, and so at some point she just had to say "stop" and her ending was simply the best way she could come up with to stop the action, dead in its tracks. It is a page-turner. And frankly its entertainment value should not be minimized. But even though it has the opportunity to tackle some hugely explosive issues (inter-racial marriage, minority oppression, religious fundamentalism, racism, etc), these things are really glossed over. The characters remain amazingly flat. This is light reading. Good. But very light.
Rating: 
Summary: What insight for only 24!
Review: Conversations rivaling Richard Russo's bar scenes (See The Risk Pool)... characters out of a John Irving novel... Just when you think the novel is settling in, she introduces the wacky intellectuals and all hell breaks loose.... and plenty of zinging humor. A pub with an Irish name, filled with Pakistanis! Great stuff. Much of the political side is very timely. Towards the end, the plot gets a little wild (aspiring to a movie?), but the well drawn characters save it. Uneven, yes, but bright, insightful, entertaining, human.... Give us more, Zadie.
Rating:
Summary: A Portrait of 20th Century England from A to Z
Review: This was one of the best contemporary novels that I have read in the past two or three years. I was amazed at how well versed Miss Smith was on topics ranging from genetic engineering to religous studies to military strategy. The characters were so full of life and she used humor in all of the right places. I'm one of those readers who likes an author who ties up loose ends. This was a complete novel in every sense of the word complete. You can choose one of two words to describe this book: TIMELY or FUN. You decide.
Rating:
Summary: Ambivalent
Review: A good first novel, overambitious..Anita and Me by Meera Syal is much better.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Worry--It Won't Bite
Review: I went into this book with phasers set on kill--the author was too young and the hype too intense. But Smith disarmed me in 50 pages flat. Beneath the humor and verbal swagger the other reviewers mention there's a very liberal, hopeful message about race--what we all really want is the freedom to be our messy selves. Race and religion, genetics and history give simple answers to the old "who am I?" question that just don't hold up in our blessedly mongrel world. Yeah, the story wobbles a bit at the end, but so what? Smith's built up so much good will by then that you feel like a heel even noticing. I'll bite into her next book if it's only half as good.
Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: This is one of the best books I have read this year. It was very enjoyable to read about the immigrant experience in England, and what is really amazing is the way in which the writer effortlessly glides between different cultural contexts. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Promising start but not consistent
Review: I was entertained and frustrated by this book at the same time. Zadie Smith has a very colorful cast of characters, but some of whom were described at length in the beginning and I got interested in their lives became nothing but lost in the background by the end, while others who popped up later in the book stole many of the scenes in the later chapters. It was hard for me to perceive the characters of Samad and Alsana speaking the way they did, considering they both grew up in Bangladesh, and fixing their arguments in a way I've never seen a south Asian couple do. To her credit, Smith did capture some of the essence of Islamic fundamentalist youth groups, halal butcheries, and Indian restaurants. It seems like her strength lies in her knowledge of Carribbean culture and its immigrant community in the UK, as she really made Ambrosia, Hortense, Clara, and Irie come to life. The plot of the book was running on tangents and could have been tighter, but I'm still glad to read it. I'll be interested in what Zadie Smith comes up with next time. Great first effort, though!
Rating:
Summary: White Teeth
Review: This book is great, hilarious, realistic, complicated.
Smith's book, a fast-moving if long novel, takes the reader helter-skelter through the lives of her mildly hyperbolic characters.
Maybe it's a little long(hardly), but the culturally-loaded plot is fascinating and unpredictable. Aside from this, the book is worth reading for the humor alone.
I was completely impressed(especially since she wrote it at age 24), and recommend it highly.
Rating:
Summary: Brush and Floss These Teeth
Review: This was a very interesting read for me because mid way through it, I had convinced myself that I didn't really like this book, but would drag myself through it because all of my really smart friends said it was good. By the time I finished it, I realized they were right. While I think the story was sluggish at points, this epic shared memorable characters with fascinating histories. The author uses language in a very gifted manner overall, and delivers a saga that is well worth reading. She was able to combine race, religion, family and a plethora of other difficult and topics into a meaningful story. I did end up feeling glad I read this novel, and look forward to seeing how I will like her next.
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