White Teeth by Zadie Smith
“Our children will be born of our actions. Our accidents will become their destinies. Oh, the actions will remain. It is a simple matter of what you will do when the chips are down, my friend. When the fat lady is singing. When the walls are falling in, and the sky is dark, and the ground is rumbling. In that moment our actions will define us. And it makes no difference whether you are being watched by Allah, Jesus, Buddah, or whether you are not. On cold days a man can see his breath, on a hot day he can't. On both occasions, the man breathes.”
Zadie Smith is one of those authors that everyone speaks about, everyone knows of her name and whilst it took me a while to warm up to her writing I think it’s actually the ideas that she communicates that are most impressive. If you read ‘White Teeth’ expecting to be blown away then maybe you will be disappointed, but if you read with an open mind then maybe you might come away with a new insight into multicultural Britain.
This is a broad and sweeping social commentary of London and the families that it inhabits. Through the lense of three families across three different generations we see an accurate portrayal of London; one that is full of vibrant and multi-faceted people of different colours, cultures and races. There is clever dialogue and rich characterisation across the generations, and Smith really is a wordsmith. If you’ve never read a Zadie Smith novel then why not start at the beginning and try White Teeth?
#FLOFavourite: Clara goes from an awkward, toothless Jehovah's Witness to a wife and a mother over the course of this novel. Her character draws you in and whilst it is a shame that throughout the novel you don’t read more from her perspective she is interesting nonetheless.
