White Teeth
One of the most talked about fictional debuts of recent years, WHITE TEETH is a funny, generous, big-hearted novel, adored by critics and readers alike. Dealing - among many other things - with friendship, love, war, three cultures and three families over three generations, one brown mouse, and the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle, it is a life-affirming, riotous must-read of a book.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
10mentions
8people
2008–2023years
60% recommend30% neutral10% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Weird that there is no discussion here relevant to the book or the author, though perhaps that's just because the book hasn't been released yet. I really enjoyed "White Teeth" so I suspect I will read this too.
- History:
* Russia Leaves the War by George Kennan * The Battle Cry of Freedom by James MacPherson
Fiction:
* Hunger by Knut Hamsun * White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Philosophy:
* Philosophy of Logic by W.V.O. Quine * Modes of Being by Paul Weiss * Phenomenology, Its Genesis and Prospect by Quentin Lauer * Philosophy of Right by Hegel
- Since about the beginning of the year:
Russia Leaves the War, George Kennan (WW I); The Fate of Man in the Modern World, Nikolai Berdyaev; Philosophy of Logic, W.V.O. Quine; Marrow and Bone, Walter Kempowski; White Teeth, Zadie Smith; Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel; Writing and Difference, Jacques Derrida; Cartesian Meditations, Edmund Husserl (not quite to the end).
White Teeth is charming, and I will read more of Smith's work fairly soon. As for Kempowski's novel, I don't know that I'm a feminist, but the women in his novels (this and All for Nothing) seem to run to the ineffectual.
- This is an interesting story but as others have commented, one without a clear point. that's not to say that we can't draw something from it. We can. Or at least I can.
Very tangentially I'm reminded of a book called White Teeth (by Zadie Smith) that I found compelling (I was living in England at the time).
Some others have commented that the author feels like things like children are an imposition. Superficially, I see why, but I think that misses the point.
She hints at this in other parts. How she comes across to me is I think what must be typical of many first generation immigrants (those first to be born in the country or who emigrated there in childhood).
You see stories like this where a family comes to the US from Russia where someone who was a doctor now works as a janitor to give his or her children a better life. I think it must be common to get knocked down several rungs on the social ladder when making this kind of move. But it's a sacrifice many parents make for the sake of their children.
Having gone to Princeton and Harvard (as the author and her brother did), they became fairly high achievers, which is to be applauded but is also I think the exception. It must be a huge part of their psyche to remember where you came from, coming to the US with nothing, living as a refugee on virtually nothing and so on.
One affect that has on someone, and I think you have to have experienced poverty to some degree to truly appreciate this, is the inescapable fear that all that you've worked for in life might go away, be taken away. Those who aren't first generation immigrants or came from money I think just don't appreciate this lack of security as it's not something they're typically exposed to or have any experience with.
I'm not even sure the author realizes it even though it's what I took from the piece. Perhaps the book will explore this (the book is mentioned at the bottom). Perhaps it's an editing snafu with the excerpt.
- White Teeth, Zadie Smith
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, Tom Robbins
Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell
Catch 22, Joseph Heller
Timequake; Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, TE Lawrence
The Histories, Tacitus
The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger (caveat, it was most effective when I read it at 16)
Redwall, Brian Jaques (got me really excited about reading when I was in the fourth grade)
This list could be much, much longer, but those are the most prominent 'life-changers' that come to mind.
- White Teeth, by Zadie Smith, is of the funniest books I have ever read and it contains the most important lesson about getting to the root of a problem that I have yet seen articulated: "The shit is not the shit. The pigeon is the shit."
