White Teeth - Zadie Smith > Reviews

Advantages: Easy to read, suitable for all.
Disadvantages: Over ambitious with an ending which lets it down...

...to all the attention that White Teeth received. The book has won an impressive array of awards and prizes. These including the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book). It also won two EMMA (BT Ethnic and Multicultural Media Awards) for Best Book/Novel and Best Female Media Newcomer, and was short listed for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the ... Read review

Advantages: The characters and it is constantly fast moving
Disadvantages: None

‘White Teeth’ is Zadie Smith’s first novel, and well worth getting into. It has been awarded numerous prizes including the prestigious year 2000 Whitbread first novel award, and the Guardian First book award. I would not claim to be a huge reader, but do probably read more that your average teenager, yet was a bit dubious about all the awards and praise that is heaped upon this book, but after reading it through, I can firmly say ... Read review

Advantages: See review
Disadvantages: None

White Teeth by Zadie Smith won the Whitbread first novel award for 2000, some books that win awards are pretentious and difficult to read, but not this one. This is a book of true quality that will be read in the future for Literature and Social History degrees. This is simply a superb book that deserves all the lavish praise that has been heaped upon it. This is an author that has a great future and has written a book that encompasses all aspects ... Read review

Advantages: Reflects the dilemmas families from other ethnicities face when trying to hold on to their roots whilst trying to adapt to a new culture.
Disadvantages: A bit tedious

Penguin ISBN 0-140-27633-5 I have not read anymore of Zadie Smiths' novels, but Winner of the Whitbread 2000 and Guardian awards for a first novel, is an excellent achievement which is well deserved. ‘White Teeth’ was written when the author was all of 24 years of age, which makes her one of my most favourite young writers like Rebecca Ray ( A Certain Age). It has taken but 2 weeks to read this - an hours journey to work and back, which has lead ... Read review

Advantages: witty and intelligent discussion of a serious issue
Disadvantages: 100 pages too long

...is no simplistic black versus white racial comedy. Zadie Smith never shirks prejudice, she tackles it face on. So for example, on one level Alsana is the typical Bangladeshi housewife similar to the Indian ‘mother-in law’, which is a stock character in ‘Goodness Gracious Me’, nagging her husband constantly and concerned about the shame on her family that her lesbian niece brings; on the other hand she is someone from a land ... Read review

Advantages: A brilliant book, dark humour and quirky characters
Disadvantages: Sometimes labours the point and sometimes you get quite angry with the characters

White Teeth by Zadie Smith pivots around the unlikely friendship of Alfred Archibald Jones and Samad Miah Iqbal who shared a tank in World War Two. The book sees the characters renewing their friendship, while both in marriages with women considerably younger than themselves, Samad has an arranged marriage with the ' the diminutive moonfaced Alsana Begum with her shrewd eyes.' (p.12) Whereas Archie stumbled across Clara Bowden who was ... Read review

Advantages: The humour is very clever
Disadvantages: No plot

The blurb at the back of my copy of this book screams "Do believe the hype, buy into it, curl up with it, savour every sentence, then turn around and reread' - The Times. Reread? I could barely get through it the once. Of course there are many good points to this book, otherwise it wouldn't have received so many rave reviews. It is very funny in parts, not slapstick but great observational humour. Zadie Smith really has an eye for spotting the ... Read review

Advantages: Very interesting
Disadvantages: Some parts slightly too long and SOME people may find the part near the end about the war confusing

I read this book approximately two years ago. Since then it has also been reproduced on t.v. by Channel 4. So, you now have the choice whether to read the book or watch the series. This book has been subject to many awards since it has been launched, and deservedly so. "White Teeth" concentrates on today's multi- cultural/racial Britain. It is extremely representative of British society, and for me that was one of the best things about reading ... Read review

Advantages: Quirky, funny, interesting, clever
Disadvantages: Can be a bit too intelligent for it's own good!

I'd heard that White Teeth was a good book, having won a Whitbread Prize and been turned into a TV programme, so I decided to pick it up in my local book shop for 6.99, which I think is quite a good price when compared to other books of the same size. White Teeth is Zadie Smith's first novel and it follows the stories of the Iqubal, Jones, Bowden and Chalfen families from 1857-1999. Each chapter tells the story of vraious members of these families, ... Read review

Advantages: inspiring
Disadvantages: very long but worth it

...you too will get nourished. White Teeth deserves the prizes and praise it has had heaped on it. It is a literary classic in the making. ... Read review

Advantages: Superb characterisation, intricate storyline
Disadvantages: Wanes in the middle slightly

White Teeth tells the story of three very different families linked together by fate - the Iqbals, the Jones' and the Chalfens. The story opens with Archibald Jones in his car, foiled in trying to take his own life on new year's day. It is at the bottom of some stairs in an alien house where Archibald, a veteran of the Buggers Battalion in World War II and victim of a broken marriage, meets the beautiful though buck-toothed Clara, a young woman whose ... Read review

Advantages: a truly interesting book, the world created by her words is completely believable and extraordainarily vivid.
Disadvantages: does ramble in places, maybe addresses too many issues to be taken in in one book.

Zadie's Smith's debut novel has been much hyped, and even if i choose to give away most of the storyline ;) it would still be worth reading. Zadie Smith's sphere of knowledge isn't just "impressive for someone of her age" (which would be slightly ludicrous coming from someone 9 yrs younger than her) but for anyone. This book explores so many issues, family, depression, race relations, life in the colonies, religion, genetics, war being the ones ... Read review