Rating: 
Summary: White Teeth and unnerving confidence for no name brit chick
Review: Stunnin debut, darlin. Unnerving confidence for a Brit chick who`d be a no name at a rock show. Just stay off the yachts away and away from fat men with fatwas and, in principle, Elton John.
Rating: 
Summary: Fun to Read!
Review: The unlikely friendship of Archie and Samad, beginning in the cramped quarters of a WWII tank, makes for a fun and fascinating story. Smith's writing is ironic without being heavy-handed, and is full of observations about the small stuff that makes up our lives. The characters are ones you would invite in for a cup of tea, just to see how things are getting on. Take White Teeth on vacation, and bask in a great read.
Rating:
Summary: Pimpin'
Review: "White Teeth" is an amazing read, a novel so large with a reach so extended one can only marvel at Zadie Smith's ability to pull it into one cohesive whole. Smith covers so many issues--religion, race, science, gender-- with so many characters that it's a true testament to her abilities I didn't get lost somewhere around page 300. No, each character has his or her own voice; Smith's ability to credibly speak for so many points of view is perhaps the greatest strength of "White Teeth." The only caveat (and one not large enough to change my rating from anything but 5 stars) is that she sometimes seems in love with her own prose. The love is usually justified, given her obvious and considerable talents, but Smith's ramblings become tedious, almost contrived more than once. A great book nonetheless. ThE best novel I've read all year!
Rating:
Summary: Explosive Debut, by fermed
Review: First novels are seldom like this: sure-footed, complex, funny, intricate, multidimensional, irreverent, and perfectly at ease with the English language and its ebonic distortions. It is hard to believe that a person in their early twenties would have the experiential and philosophical data base from which to inform as large a creative project as this one; but this is all we are told about Ms. Zadie Smith in the book's cover: that she is 24 years old and a graduate of Cambridge University. Neither of those conditions can account for what she has wrought. She weaves themes such as racial identity, religion, sexuality, political activism, dematology, Englishness, adolescent ennui, gangsterism, war, murder, peace, genetic engineering, body contours, and toothlessness into a rambunctious, wild, energetic, and ultimately satisfying panorama. I suspect Ms. Smith will offend the Political Correct amongst us on the basis that certain things should never be spoken about. She talks about everything. She has a fully developed sense of humor, Ms. Smith does, and along with it a sense of the ridiculous. Thus her surfaces are kept on the verge of slapstick, while underneath there are counter currents of sadness and of the futility of life. Characters are drawn masterfully, and therefore they are hard to forget even long after the book has been finished. The signs of a true professional are a steady hand and a lack of nervousness about what they do. Ms. Smith's professionalism never abandons her, and it is for this reason that one can read her book without the fear of having to make excuses because of her tender age or her lack of writing experience. I expect Zadie Smith will have an extraordinary career as a novelist. I can't wait for her next masterpiece. I recommend this one highly.
Rating: 
Summary: Flawed (but Moments of Grandeur!)
Review: The first dazzling 90 pages or so of White Teeth will lure you in, make you call your friends to tell them about this amazing thing you just discovered (if you can actually tear yourself from the book) and rekindle your hope for the future of contemporary fiction. And then the next 300 or so pages will sober you up. By the end you'll only be able to wish you could have adored the book as much as you had originally wanted to, like a lover you move in with after a month, only to find yourself quickly, abjectly disappointed by their ordinary human failings. Smith's book benefits from comparison to the mediocrity passing for serious fiction that's received such currency the past five years or so. Its blend of high and lowbrow humor and erudition allows it popular consumption while stimulating the intellects of serious readers. Its famously bedazzling passages will, indeed, blow you away at times. And the scope of the author's imagination is, indeed, astounding. The book's strengths are strengths that other recent fiction has conspicuously lacked. It is not a trendy book, and it earns the frequent comparisons to Rushdie. Nevertheless, Smith showcases some major weaknesses. Most seriously, her characters, who at first introduction seem so promisingly complex, degenerate into caricatures who too often Speak For Their People. How could Smith have glossed over Samad Iqbal's initial complexities and let him become an utterly predictable Resentful Bengali Immigrant? How could she have resorted to letting Archie Jones rest on his predictable laurels as merely a Simple, Good-Natured English Bloke? The answer is clear: those are the easiest ways to think about and write characters. Everyone is familiar with stereotyped, predigested notions of Otherness. Yet no one in real life is that cut and dry. And no one in the beginning of her book is that predictable, either. Hence the disappointment. I found myself wanting to scream out at times "No, my Alsana would never have said that! Or if she had, it would only have been ironically!" Another problem is the heavy-handed pop existentialism that informs the book and passes for its Big Idea. The book, beyond its multiculti particularities, is essentially a treatment of the ageless problem of free will versus predestination. What at first are subtly suggested recurring themes become louder and louder, cruder and cruder bombasts, articulated more and more overtly again and again (so that every minor character and incident is retroactively subsumed into the book's unfortunate "argument"), culminating in an arch finale that redefines cheap and easy. Yes, you can see I am bitter. I expected more from White Teeth. Not just from its hype, but from its glorious first hundred pages and the revivifying moments of greatness that followed. I think we should start a campaign to demand that Smith go back and properly rewrite the thing, giving her limitlessly promising book the time it so deserved (you can still be this year's literary ingenue, Zadie, don't worry). I think we all deserve that much from her.
Rating:
Summary: Grand Reading, Grand Promise
Review: The fun in reading this book has many layers. First are the characters, who are varied, unusual, and yet quite credible. Second is the author's wit and spirit, which makes the reading easy and enjoyable. Those layers, of course, are the classic elements of a splendid book, but there is also a more unusual third layer. That comes in knowing that the author is a 24-year-old woman who already has mastered enough about writing and people to tell a mature story. I read it taking a triple pleasure in the scenes, style, and in anticipation of all the other fine novels bound to come from Zadie Smith.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful tale spinning
Review: this vast novel is a great spinning top of a tale. just when it begins to wobble and lose momentum, it rights itself and takes off again. like great story tellers before her zadie smith manages to tie all the characters and situations together into a rewarding finale .every time i picked up this book i was transported to london , currently the most exciting and varied city in the world. i hope ms. smith is awarded the booker and possesses the strength to withstand the backlash from the british press that always follows. its probally unfair to lump this in with "summer reading" but i can't think of a more pleasurable way to spend a day than with this funny ,insightful and engaging book. one can only wonder what great reading is in store from this alarmingly young writer.
Rating: 
Summary: Two for language art
Review: This story was incredibly drawn out. I guess I've been reading too much E.Lynn Harris and Eric Jerome Dickey because I did not get this sistah at all. Too many characters, too many plots, too many words to describe one simple thing. I'll leave it to the elitist. Glad I only paid half price.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious and empathic
Review: In the last thirty-five years, I can remember "outright and prolonged laughter" while reading three novels: K. Amis's "Lucky Jim," P. Roth's "Portnoy's Complaint," and D. Lodge's "The British Museum is Falling Down." It has been a long time but, finally, here is one more to add to the list. In some ways, what Ms Smith has done is even more impressive when one realizes that her humor is spread among a very wide cast of characters, all of whom we come to know very well, and a variety of times and situations. The narrative has a real drive to it and this, too, intensifies both the humor and the pathos of the characters. It is not as if these characters are particularly novel: the reader will probably feel that he or she knows them or their type. But what Ms. Smith does is to take the familiar and give it a twist or a shove into some unexpected territory. This ability as well as the broad cultural [popular as well as the more traditional and literary] foundation from which the author works make it all the more remarkable that this novel was written when she was only twenty-one. I suppose this is to her credit as well as to the credit of the British educational system. One thing is certain: This is one writer who seems to be able to see more facets of the ethnic and cultural melange than just about anyone else. It may be a cliche, but while I couldn't stop reading, I certainly did not want the book to end. And I await Ms. Smith's second novel with great anticipation.
Rating:
Summary: Great.
Review: White Teeth begins and ends stunningly. In between there are ups and downs, but every plotting misstep is more than compensated the wonderful asides -- digressions of both plot and voice -- that sparkle throughout. White Teeth is one of the best treatments of history and how we channel it that I've read.
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