Rating: 
Summary: Body of a Book
Review: Zadie Smith's deput is an astonishment, a privilege to read in this era of the endlessly declining quality of fiction and writing in general. The anatomy of Smith's writing is as follows: one foot in the East, one in the West, tongue in cheek, one eyebrow raised, eyes crossed, and a hand stretched out to the future. White Teeth is one of the funniest books you will read this or any year, and a well-paced story that enthralls from the first pages. It compares favorably with its Americanized counterpart, Love Songs of the Tone-Deaf; both are debuts by novelists I am certain will entertain us for years to come, and both are not just droll or amusing, but downright hilarious reading, while never straying from their stories. Terrific stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: Chipped Teeth
Review: Well, when I read about this book in the NY Times Book Review, which decided it was one of the best books of the year, I immediately short-listed it for an Xmas present. Well, I must say, I have received better Christmas presents. No, not the Fine Young Cannibals CD, it wasn't that bad, but this novel was definitely overrated. I have read quite a lot of the reviews here and they echo my feelings. I was let-down. Newsweek loved it, NY Times loved it. Usually that's a good indicator. Well, I didn't love it. I think that Zadie Smith is a fabulously talented woman, younger than me and blessed beyond belief but at times it just feels like she's thumbing her nose at those with average command of the English language. She is showing off. I think she's long-winded and, although, like I said, very talented, I think she overreaches. Someone else said that she didn't fill out her characters. I'd agree with that. I was really enjoying about the first 300 pages. I thought the start was great. But somewhere in there she got confused. I couldn't tell what the focus of the book was. Was it Samad and Archie? At first it was. Or was it Irie, who seemed to be the pivot for later events. I found it hard to believe that such a prominent scientist as Chalfen (that whole Chalfenism thing had me chafing) would be so fulfilled and helped by a 17 year old???!!!! Magid didn't exactly have the best genes. And would a scientist of his stature need Irie to do his filing? No, he would probably have a pro, a real trained secretary. Now like others said, there's a lot to admire here. She has a phenomenal command of English, a great ear for language and really, her prose is fantastic. But I think she overreached in trying to wrap everything up quite so neatly. I think that was her biggest mistake. Her scope was too wide. Someone before me said there was an "embarassment of riches." I'd agree. If she had focused just on Samad and Archie's lives after the war and their lives (which was what I anticipated when we got through with the intro) it would have been excellent. She is so talented that I will buy her next book too quite likely. She is very talented. But this one doesn't live up to the hype.
Rating:
Summary: Very little plaque. . .
Review: White Teeth is a formidably entertaining novel by Zadie Smith. A first-time author, it is amazing to behold her maturity.Smith writes with a biting, satirical wit. I felt that she adores each character she created, yet she is unafraid to place her beloved cast into humiliating situations. Samad Iqbal and Irie, especially, are treated exceptionally badly. Iqbal is forced to go through an embarassing masturbation sequence, while Irie receives a nightmare hairdressing experience. Both situations raise the laughmeter a notch but there is always a sense of pathos hiding behind the humour. Sprawling across the 20th century but concentrating on the latter years, White Teeth concerns two men and their resulting families. Archie is a slow, common Londoner, who becomes a sort of anti-hero at the unexpected, and somewhat unconvincing conclusion. Samad is an Indian immigrant fighting a war between his heritage and popular culture. He fails miserably. Both marry and have children. Irie, Magid and Millat, then take over the focus of the story while the adults sit back into a supporting role. Another family is introduced later on in the novel, the almost perfect, Chalfens, an original family if there ever was one. The novel is very much character based. The story itself is episodic, plotless. There is a conclusion to the story but it's a half-hearted ending as if Smith ran out of pages to write on. Even so, a character-driven novel as good as this one is a rarity. It is refreshing to find original creations can still be uprooted. There are very few cavities in White Teeth.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't believe the hype
Review: This book is okay, but definitely not worth all the hype it has received. Yes it is an entertaining read, but at the end of it, all I can say is "So what?" This book did not touch my soul in any way. I also found her style to be HUGELY derivative of Salman Rushdie. A good pick if you are going to imitate someone's style, but not particularly original. And if you like that style of writing (which I do), why not read the master himself? Overall I'd give this book a big: don't bother.
Rating: 
Summary: This novel lacks bite.
Review: This book comes with a lot of hype. The blurbs are filled with the words "funny" and "witty". And it needs some humour to carry it along, since there isn't much in the way of dramatic structure. Unfortunately, for me at least, the laughs (or giggles or even smirks) were not thick on the ground. To be fair, I haven't finished the book. I kept asking myself "Why am I reading this?", without coming up with a good answer. The biggest problem is Archie, one of the protagonists. Given that the novel starts off in 1975, "drip" seems the appropriate word to describe him. A greater understanding of this character is not something the average reader would crave. Zadie Smith does do some things well in this novel. Her ear for dialogue is good, and she does the various ethnic dialects convincingly (although an American audience can't really know how authentic they are). And she writes about interracial relations in an insightful way. But it still didn't make me want to slog through this.
Rating: 
Summary: Astonishing Debut
Review: As I read this novel I continued to be astonished that the author is only 24 years old. That was almost bothersome at first; that someone so young could enter the personas of middle-aged men of two different nationalities, and that she could do it with such confidence. If this isn't quite a 5-star novel, it is still an amazingly accomplished debut. It's literary, has depth of character and purpose of plot, and wraps up with a smooth and satisfying ending. Mary Higgins Clark and Danielle Steel readers probably won't like it; this novel takes a little work and persistance. If this is her debut goodness knows what her next endevour will be. She's definately a writer to watch.
Rating:
Summary: SUM OF PARTS DOES NOT EQUAL THE WHOLE
Review: Ms. Zadie Smith sure knows her way around the English language and I was impressed by the way she writes descriptive paragraphs and crafts quirky characters and situations, so I was disappointed that I felt bored with so much of this book. Why? Because there wasn't a clear story to follow. After I got past the "bells and whistles" of Ms. Smith's often engaging prose, I longed for something else to keep me turning the pages---like "what's this story about?" For me, the writing was too episodic---just a big collection of colorful characters and read more like a series of novelettes than one cohesive novel. Yet,there is much to admire in WHITE TEETH---I was immediately drawn in by the beginning--Archie's darkly-comic suicide attempt (but then he disappears for large chunks of the book); Irie's sad, but also funny, trip to the beauty parlor to have her black, kinky hair straightened (she's not it the book that much either); and the hilarious Chalfens--I really loved them and would actually like to read a novel about them alone. I think that was the problem--Ms. Smith had an "embarrassment of riches" with too many good characters. Like she had to put every great character she constructed into this book instead of, perhaps, focusing on one or two and saving the others for future stories. It was like being at a cocktail party where you talk to many people, hear an amusing anecdote from their lives, and move on without really knowing or caring too much. I think Ms. Smith is a very talented writer and I will look for her next work of fiction. Hopefully she will deliver the steak along with the sizzle.
Rating:
Summary: Too Much Hype
Review: I was very excited to get this book and read it after all the glowing reviews. The first section was very good and I looked forward to the rest of the book. Unfortunately, it was downhill from there and I struggled to keep awake through the remainder. I still don't get what happened at the end....probably because I skimmed through the last fifty pages. I was so tired of the writing style it was giving me a headache.
Rating:
Summary: An impressive first work.
Review: I find it hard to believe Zadie Smith is only 24 years old. She has written an amazing work! She has taken the threads of everyday life, livened them up almost beyond recognition, and woven them into this funny, poignant, and sometimes just plain strange, tapestry. Hers are the kind of characters that you're sure you have met somewhere before. However, it wasn't perfect. While Ms. Smith's descriptions of her settings are dazzling, sometimes she goes too much into detail. Also, her South Asian characters seem to be based on rather crude stereotypes. Other than that, what a book this is!
Rating:
Summary: Filled with Gems
Review: In the first chapter, Zadie Smith writes about a character, Clara Bowden, "She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down." Because this line seemed familiar to me, I e-mailed it to a friend of mine and asked if I was experiencing some genuine deja vu or if he had read something similar somewhere before. He responded saying that maybe it's just one of those gems that are so good that you think you've heard it before. Well, White Teeth is filled with many more gems like this. It's the best novel that I have read in many years. And, yes, it's all the more remarkable when you consider that Zadie Smith finished it at 24 years of age.
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