White Teeth – Zadie Smith

This book is why I started this blog. I now own three copies, and have read it at least twice. I finished it the day before yesterday.

And do you know what? I just had to look it up on Goodreads to try and remember what it was about.

I enjoyed it. I did. I have about half a dozen ages turned up to mark particularly witty passages and wry asides that made me laugh out loud.

Zadie Smith’s writing is remarkable for a debut novelist – it sparks and crackles, and sharply spears cultural assumptions. Covering three (almost four) generations of multiracial London, it is about ordinary people with small expectations, both of themselves and of others.

The characters are understandable, if not sympathetic – I didn’t really ‘feel’ any of them. They’re well-written, if a little empty. You’re just getting your head around someone, then they fall into caricature.

It’s a big book about small lives. Until the last quarter or so, when it tries to become something much bigger and falls over somewhat.

The end jars fairly horribly and is better best forgotten. Although, luckily, by tomorrow I will have.