Rating: 
Summary: Impressive!
Review: This is her FIRST novel? Well, that's depressing! Isn't she supposed to have to... I don't know... pay her dues or something before she writes this well? On the shelf, this didn't look like "my kind" of novel (I like historical romance and fantasy/science fiction best), but I made the mistake of reading the first page to see what it was like. That was it -- hooked. The characters are an eclectic mix, and they're all fascinating. The plot hops back and forth through their lives, but you're able to follow the story beautifully. It's amusing and touching, sentimental and matter-of-fact. Very nice. Not good to read at bedtime though... "Ooh! just a couple more pages till I see what happens..." I thought things got a bit disjointed at the very end. There were a lot of threads going by that point, and things needed tying up. Maybe it nudged just a little too far in the madcap direction... but nah, I'm not going to take a whole star off for it. It was thoroughly enjoyable, and... a first novel?!? Not really! Good stuff!
Rating: 
Summary: A Start?
Review: This novel has been vastly over-hyped - but then again, so much is. I thought that while "White Teeth" is not nearly so good as the acclaim would have you believe, neither is it as poor as its detractors say it is. Rather, I felt that it showed an author with some promise, but not yet in control of her writing. The story centres on the friendship of Samad and Archie, who meet in World War Two and continue to be close throughout post-war times. Smith uses this friendship as a starting point or device through which she can examine and satirise the emergence of a multi-cultural London, with all its social problems. This is not exactly a new subject - writers such as Rushdie and Kureishi for example, have fished in these waters before - but I thought that Zadie Smith's satirical/humerous approach was interesting and fun to read. But, that enjoyment lasted only up to a point, because the real problems with "White Teeth" began when Samad and Archie's children reached their teenage years. At that point, Samad and Archie - by far the most rounded and interesting characters and therefore the main strength of the early parts of the novel - largely disappear. The result was that I thought that Smith became bogged down in a plot that she could neither resolve nor develop satisfactorily - the novel just plodded on and on, the weight of prose being far too great a strain on the flimsy storyline, the satire and humour becoming increasingly strained. The nicely observed bits (such as the truly horrendous Chalfen family) were far overdone. The novel ended on a silly rather than a satirical note. That was really a shame. I felt that better editing might have helped (and it might have removed the annoyingly frequent errors and inconsistencies in the text). Nonetheless, there was enough in "White Teeth" to give hope of better things to come from Zadie Smith.
Rating: 
Summary: My wife is currently reading this book...
Review: ...She had to read a few passages to me - not because they were amazing - rather, because they had to do with Vespa motorscooter details, and I'm a fanatic. Anyway, her facts about the Vespa, model year/speed/color, etc. are all wrong. I know this is a minute detail but, it kind of throws the read - in this case my wife - off. Just for the record the Vespa GS was not produced for sale until 1955. Maybe she can add this to the list of edits for the next edition. By the way, my Vespa GS can go 70 MPH downhill, not a mere 22 MPH!
Rating: 
Summary: Good book but
Review: It is really a good book but too many details.And sometimes I am bored. But the book is really good and sometimes I felt Irie isa friend of mine.
Rating:
Summary: lives up to the hype
Review: Spectacular and hilarious, one of the best books I have ever read. Perhaps not a book that everyone will *get.* I was amazed by the breadth of ages, races, issues this author successfully tackles, with humor, subtlety, intelligence and compassion.
Rating:
Summary: Simply excellent.
Review: She's gorgeous. This is her first novel. It's fabulous: filled with engaging characters and perceptive insights... I'm green with envy. But that won't keep me from recommending the book highly and eagerly awaiting her next work... Go, Zadie. You're blessed.
Rating:
Summary: An Impressive First Effort From a Powerful New Voice
Review: On the strength of Zadie Smith's short story in Nick Hornby's great anthology, "Speaking With the Angel", I picked up Smith's virtuoso first novel "White Teeth". "White Teeth" deals with the interconnected lives of a group of vastly diverse individuals forming a dysfunctional extended family. The hapless Archie and self-important Samad are just two of the amazingly nuanced portrayals Smith creates in her novel. In the style of Paul Thomas Anderson's film "Magnolia", Smith's "White Teeth" is a big, ambitious work in which strangely unrelated lives crash together with sometimes hazardous, unbelievable results. The plot is not nearly so important as the fantastic characterizations. Smith effortlessly juggles a great amount of action with grace, emotion, and indelible humor. She touches on everything from war, politics, fundamentalist religiousity, multi-ethnic society, to unplanned pregnancy. This novel has something for every reader and is more fun than it promises in its early pages. Forgive the intimidating length and spend some time with this novel--- it's more than worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Delightfully ambitious
Review: I applaud Ms. Smith's debut. So many young women writers fall back on simplicity, cliche and stereotype in their novels, but Smith chose to tell a multi-generational, multi-ethnic, multi-layered story. With utter disregard to the oft-perpetuated "write only what you know" advice given to young writiers, Smith has crafted a complex, moving and zesty narrative which breathes life into mad families and dysfunctional individuals.
Rating:
Summary: Seems to enjoy the sound of her own voice
Review: The word that kept coming to mind as I read this book was "ambitious." Smith ties together a legion of vividly and deeply drawn characters, all with different agendas; several different timelines; a rather byzantine central plot; and commentary on everything from genetic research to high school social hierarchy. It's a lot to swallow in one novel. She is most adept at drawing her characters--their physical characteristics, quirks and misgivings come alive on the page. Smith also provides sharp, witty insights on pop culture and life in the mixing bowl that is North London. However, the elaborate character development takes away momentum from the plot, and has the effect of making the plot move in fits and starts. Just when I was starting to enjoy a scene or get into one character's actions, she'd go off on a tangent that seemed to link characters and actions only very remotely to each other. At times it felt a little self-indulgent, like she was admiring her own ability to turn a clever phrase or take the action momentarily off-course and then bring it back again. By the time I was 400 pages into the book, I was asking, "How in the heck is she going to wrap this all up into an ending?" I think Smith was asking herself the same question at this point. The ending comes off as a bit of a stretch, but she does manage to pull things together reasonably well. Still, after I closed the cover, I said, "huh?" and had to go back and reread some earlier sections to figure out how they tied to the ending. To me, this book needed a skilled editor who could tighten things up and keep things moving with out taking too much away from the rambling, bildungsroman-esque nature of the plot. It'll be interestesting to see what Smith has to say in her next novel--this one seemed to cover every base, at length.
Rating:
Summary: Great intro.....
Review: The reviews I read were wonderful, and I got this book for Christmas. The beginning was engaging. The descriptions of Clara and her experiences were dynamite. I was loving this book. Then, somewhere about 1/3 of the way through, I had no idea why this person was here or that person was there, and it bogged down. I completely lost interest.
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