Okay, After finding a well-worn copy in the library a few weeks ago, I finally read White Teeth (read it fast actually because I couldn't renew it. There was a waiting list), and though I approached it with low expectations, I now see what all the hype was about! White Teeth was a 542 page funny-well written-absorbing-thought provoking-belly laugh of a book. I would read it again, and plan to buy it for my exclusive Chic Reid's collection. The girl can write!
White Teeth was one of those books that hooked me in from the very first page. Free of all the overly descriptive text (she repeatedly fell prey to in On Beauty), White Teeth was soooooo well written. It flowed, it made me laugh (more on that later), and she showed an incredible way of writing about many different characters, culturally, age-wise, lifestyle, history, personalities, without overwhelming the book, and simultaneously staying true to each character relevance in the story.
Smith has an ear for voices, she can capture the vernacular, cultural ways of speech, and unique ways that our tongues pronounce words like no writer I have read in a long time (and few writers-including myself have that natural skill). Even the most minute character in the book has there own voice and presence in her work. It’s really impressive!
The book chronicles the lives of three main families, the Jones clan, The Iqbal family, and the Chalfen’s. The Jones and Iqbals become like family once Samad and Archibald (marry younger wives Clara and Alsana) and reunite after the war, and despite their extreme differences the two men become best friends. The Chalfen’s enter the lives of both families when their kids (Irie Jones, Millat Iqbal and Joshua Chalfen get into trouble at school). These families, bring together interesting pasts, extremely different ways of looking at the world, and ultimately collide in a power struggle that can only be experienced in places like London, Toronto, New York, places in the world where so many different cultures find themselves neighbors, foes, and ultimately family.
Below are some of my favourite characters in the book:
Hortense Bowden (Brilliant) this character only plays a small part in the beginning of the book but becomes one of the best characters towards the end. She is Clara’s mother and grandmother of Irie Jones (Clara and Archibald Jones daughter). The way that Smith wrote this character had me cracking up. Smith has the ability to show the ridiculousness of some of our beliefs without undermining the character themselves (or readers who may subscribe to the same beliefs), rather she shows us the funny side of some of our more earnest and passionate ideals. On my way to work one Sunday morning, I was reading on the train (a long train ride flies by when you're enjoying a good book) and there was one section where Irie talks about Hortense ability to interject God and damnation into the most mundane everyday tasks like doing laundry. This part was so funny that I was laughing hysterically and couldn't control myself. I looked around to see if anyone was looking (two women were a sleep and one man just ignored me). This was just one example of the many times Smith had me laughing out loud.
Alsana Iqbal (favourite): she was just a loud mouth, honest, entertaining character. So good!
Irie Jones: A girl I could relate to. She was real.
Samad Iqbal: Funny, Funny, Funny without losing the seriousness of beliefs that this character held dear.
Joyce Chalfen: Interesting woman. I’ve met women like her before (can’t say I like them much). Had a disturbing way of using her young son to mask her interest in Millat.
Shiva (The waiter): he was arrogant, rude, but very funny because he simply told it like it was. His delivery was obnoxious but the words were true.
Joshua Chalfen: Cute little Character.
Marcus Chalfen: Well written!
Smith straddles so many worlds, with the ability to show the pretty and ugly side of all without judgment or passivity. Her humour, her fascination with people, life, our motivations, and our secrets is all captured beautifully. She tells us off and protects us and makes us laugh at the same time. I’m a fan!
Here are some of my favourite quotes in the book:
Clara understood that Archibald Jones was no romantic. Three months in one stinking room in Cricklewood had been sufficient revelation. Oh, he could be affectionate and sometimes even charming, he could whistle a clear, crystal note first thing in the morning, he drove calmly and responsibly and he was a surprisingly competent cook, but romance was beyond him, passion, unthinkable. And if you are saddled with a man as average as this, Clara felt, he should at least be utterly devoted to you-to your beauty, to your youth-that’s the least he could do to make up for things. But not Archie. One month into their marriage and he already had that funny glazed look men have when they are looking through you (48).
Holding the car boot open against a wind determined to bring it down. Samad was first amused and then depressed by the items his wife and son determined essential, life or death things (222).
Millat (Son)
Born to Run (album) Springsteen
Poster of De Niro in “You talkin’ to me’ scene from Taxi Driver
Betamax copy of Purple Rain (Rock movie)
Shrink to-fit Levis 501 (red tab)
Pair of black converse baseball shoes
A Clockwork Orange (book)
Alsana (Wife)
Sewing Machine
Three pots of tiger balm
Leg of lamb (frozen)
Footbath
Linda Goodman’s Star signs (book)
Huge box of beedi cigarettes
Divargiit Singh in Moonshine over Kerala (musical video)
…But he knew other things. He knew that he, Millat, was a Paki no matter where he came from; that he smelt of curry; had no sexual identity; took other people’s jobs; or had no job and bummed off the state; or gave all the jobs to relatives; that he could be a dentist or a shop-owner or a curry shifter, but not a footballer or a film maker; that he should go back to his own country; or stay here and earn his bloody keep; that he worshiped elephants and wore turbans; that no one who looked like Millat, or spoke like Millat, or felt like Millat, was ever on the news unless they had recently been murdered. In short he knew he had no face in this country, no voice in the country, until the week before last when suddenly people like Millat were on every channel and every radio and every newspaper and they were angry, and Millat recognized the anger, thought it recognized him, and grabbed it with both hands (234).
But Irie didn’t know she was fine. There was England, a gigantic mirror, and there was Irie, without reflection. A stranger in a strange Land (266).
And underneath it all, there remained and an ever-present anger and hurt, the feeling or belonging nowhere that comes to people who belong everywhere (269).
I’m as liberal as the next person,’ complained Alsana, once they were alone. ‘But why do they always have to be laughing and making a song-and-dance about everything? I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not’ (285).
He’d taken never ending insult all his damn life, and survived, coming out the other side to smug (297).
It is only this late in the day, and possibly only in Willesden, that you can find best friends Sita and Sharon, constantly mistaken for each other because Sita is white (her mother like the name) and Sharon is Pakistani (her mother thought it best-less trouble) (327).
The English are the only people,’ she would say with distaste, ‘who want to teach you and steal from you at the same time,’ Alsana’s mistrust for the Chalfens was not more or less than that (356).
Oh he loves her; just as the English loved India and Africa and Ireland; it is the love that is the problem, people treat their lovers badly (361).
Now that Miss. Z has been christened by Chic Reid I have a funny little feeling this writer will go on to a brilliant career…such as Oprah did once I gave her the thumbs up back in 1988. And considering the fact that TIME magazine listed her as one of the worlds 100 most influential writers entertainers http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187314,00.html I think the old Chic magic is already working :)
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