White Teeth (Book Review)

The worst part about "White Teeth": the characters. While author Zadie Smith did a fair job molding each player into a firm, clearly indentifiable type, I had a hard time believing in the existence of any of them.

Five year old children speak like naive 23-year-olds. 15-year-old teenagers act like angry, self-righteous 23 year-olds. And grown men and women act like betrayed 23-year-olds who refuse to grow up (no coincidence that Smith was 23 when she wrote this).

The common element? The similarity between these otherwise well-defined stock characters? You can tell the same person is speaking through them, even as their independant actions define them (i.e. good character development... poor execution). To me, a great author shapes characters in such a way that you forget  there's simply one person supplying the dialogue. One person sitting behind the computer screen, or scribbling notes onto the napkins. I never felt this way with "White Teeth." I never truly escaped, but rather found myself being repeatedly pulled into an agenda.

I imagined myself back at grad school, hearing my contemporary British fiction professor attest to this book's merit. Analyzing it with Said in one hand; Sinclair's "White Man's Burden" in the other.

But what good is a review, without a point of comparison: "The English Patient." A brilliant, well-crafted book, save for one passage towards the end that nearly ruined it for me: an Indian man seeing himself through the white men's eyes, speaking not as the person we almost believe him to be... but instead as a mouthpiece for the author. We hear Michael Onddatje, not Kirpal Singh. Which isn't to say that there was no merit to Kirpal's anger (there was), but that for one weak moment in an otherwise amazing text, Ondaatje failed to let the characters actions speak for themselves. The scene was, in culinary speak, overdone.

And yet: I list "English Patient" among the best novels of recent time. I savored nearly every page of it. I underlined everything. Made notes in every margin.

I didn't do that with "White Teeth" — mainly because the copy was on loan to me from a friend. Partly because I had no 20 page papers to craft after-the-fact. And partly because "White Teeth" is no "English Patient."

Rather, the scene that bothered me in "Patient" keeps happening in "White Teeth." I could never catch my breath long enough to suspend disbelief.

At least... not at first. I started to actually get into the text about midway through (enough so, at least, that I was determined to finish). And the last 40 pages were even better: I was eager to see how the parties would come together (or kill each other) in the end. I didn't so much care about any of them (save maybe Archie and Irie), but I awaited an end to the plot in much the same way you might read a folktale, awaiting a summization of the story's moral.

I appreciated that, at the very least. I was hooked just enough to want to know the "endgame." I saw a few snippets of fine writing and deep insight. I marked pages in exactly six spots with post-it notes. I wanted to finish it. I'm glad I'm read it. And now: I'm most eager to move on to something else.

(Which compares to a long list of books I would've chucked aside after the first chapter, had it not been for the impending threat of class discussion.)

In short: there's potential with Zadie Smith. And, to be fair, my impression of the book was perhaps colored by a single plug on the front cover: "White Teeth just may be the first great novel of the century" —The San Francisco Chronicle.

This wretched line set an expectation the book was doomed to not live up to. If ever I publish, all I want on the book jacket is this: "Not a bad read" or maybe "Like to read in the bathroom? Take this with you!"

Now that's the sort of book that doesn't disappoint.