jung's review against another edition
funny
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
lots of thoughts on this one. i guess to begin, i have seen this book everywhere. I'm unsure if its possible to frequent bookstores of libraries without having heard of Zadie and white teeth. so much so that i had basically internalized the preconception that White Teeth was the eminent work of commercial fiction, asking myself, constantly: what's the big deal? what's the big deal?
nowadays, i read contemporary fiction pretty much exclusively, so i think at first, i was a little bit off-put. as i couldn't help but make comparisons to other books falling in the "feminist / leftist / racially-charged / experimental / London-based contemporary fiction" category (pulled directly from my review of Stubborn Archivist by Yara Fowler.) And even still, im not necessarily convinced that it is the book that does this long history (Hanif Kureishi, I'm looking at you) of London-based bildungsromans the best - perhaps Bernadine Evaristo is better in this regard. (And wow. the similarities between these two books are hugely striking. It is almost as if Evaristo has read White Teeth before lol) But i think that i am missing the point when i joke about Evaristo, which is to say that White Teeth is the reason why "Girl, Woman, Other" exists, and why we use the category "contemporary" at all.
What im trying to say is that the language structures and cadence, the humor (pretentious with the hint of a side-smile, self-indulgent, but also reverent and thoughtful), the tone (informal but omniscient, wise), are all so reminiscent of contemporary writing because White Teeth was the first to do it. There are so many recognizable beats in her writing that I read in short stories and books published last year, that it's hard for me to grasp that this book was written in the 90's. I think without that context, I could have been convinced that it was written last year. That is the big deal. The big deal is that before White Teeth, no one sounded like Zadie Smith, and now everyone tries to sound like Zadie Smith. I am looking at the books that I've logged before and after this book was published, and the shift is marked. insert [people like Junot Diaz, Jess Walter, Elif Batuman, even Sally Rooney, and so on]. It seems as if her tone - that sense of playfulness with a glint of hunger in the eyes - took the world by storm. And it was really enchanting to see the roots of where that came from.
The overall story is a bit sprawling in scope, in the way that these types of books are. I couldn't say that I was captivated for the whole time, but it all flowed pretty smoothly and made reasonable sense. Content-wise, I appreciated the general sentiments, found the philosophy and the navel-gazing interesting, but am glad that it's all pretty inconclusive. Made me think about the erosion of tradition and emergence into the modern age in ways that i hadn't before, but also felt a bit dated to Y2K (probably aided by the fact that the book makes Y2K a thing, basically). The plot and characters interact and exist in a zone ever-so-slightly too caricatured to exist within the [expected, could happen irl], instead lying [somewhere where it almost breaks the suspension of disbelief], which is perhaps another field of storytelling that Zadie pioneered. See some parallels to White Noise by Dellilo in this regard, but Smith is more subtle at it. Very cool stuff.
She's also got some of that David Foster Wallace new sincerity-esque vibe to her work that i think has been lost in translation by her contemporaries. There may be something to be said about the adoption transition of this style into the realms of "high fiction" ie. MFA fiction and its subsequent loss of "heart," (perhaps due to the formalization of it) but I'll just leave that thought without going any further.
Anyway, awesome to read this. I can't say it is my favorite of the contemporary fiction genre, but i am pretty convinced that this is a hugely important book in the cultural lexicon, and I can't believe that i went for so long without reading it.
nowadays, i read contemporary fiction pretty much exclusively, so i think at first, i was a little bit off-put. as i couldn't help but make comparisons to other books falling in the "feminist / leftist / racially-charged / experimental / London-based contemporary fiction" category (pulled directly from my review of Stubborn Archivist by Yara Fowler.) And even still, im not necessarily convinced that it is the book that does this long history (Hanif Kureishi, I'm looking at you) of London-based bildungsromans the best - perhaps Bernadine Evaristo is better in this regard. (And wow. the similarities between these two books are hugely striking. It is almost as if Evaristo has read White Teeth before lol) But i think that i am missing the point when i joke about Evaristo, which is to say that White Teeth is the reason why "Girl, Woman, Other" exists, and why we use the category "contemporary" at all.
What im trying to say is that the language structures and cadence, the humor (pretentious with the hint of a side-smile, self-indulgent, but also reverent and thoughtful), the tone (informal but omniscient, wise), are all so reminiscent of contemporary writing because White Teeth was the first to do it. There are so many recognizable beats in her writing that I read in short stories and books published last year, that it's hard for me to grasp that this book was written in the 90's. I think without that context, I could have been convinced that it was written last year. That is the big deal. The big deal is that before White Teeth, no one sounded like Zadie Smith, and now everyone tries to sound like Zadie Smith. I am looking at the books that I've logged before and after this book was published, and the shift is marked. insert [people like Junot Diaz, Jess Walter, Elif Batuman, even Sally Rooney, and so on]. It seems as if her tone - that sense of playfulness with a glint of hunger in the eyes - took the world by storm. And it was really enchanting to see the roots of where that came from.
The overall story is a bit sprawling in scope, in the way that these types of books are. I couldn't say that I was captivated for the whole time, but it all flowed pretty smoothly and made reasonable sense. Content-wise, I appreciated the general sentiments, found the philosophy and the navel-gazing interesting, but am glad that it's all pretty inconclusive. Made me think about the erosion of tradition and emergence into the modern age in ways that i hadn't before, but also felt a bit dated to Y2K (probably aided by the fact that the book makes Y2K a thing, basically). The plot and characters interact and exist in a zone ever-so-slightly too caricatured to exist within the [expected, could happen irl], instead lying [somewhere where it almost breaks the suspension of disbelief], which is perhaps another field of storytelling that Zadie pioneered. See some parallels to White Noise by Dellilo in this regard, but Smith is more subtle at it. Very cool stuff.
She's also got some of that David Foster Wallace new sincerity-esque vibe to her work that i think has been lost in translation by her contemporaries. There may be something to be said about the adoption transition of this style into the realms of "high fiction" ie. MFA fiction and its subsequent loss of "heart," (perhaps due to the formalization of it) but I'll just leave that thought without going any further.
Anyway, awesome to read this. I can't say it is my favorite of the contemporary fiction genre, but i am pretty convinced that this is a hugely important book in the cultural lexicon, and I can't believe that i went for so long without reading it.
celeste98's review against another edition
challenging
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
jcharlton's review against another edition
I didn’t like the characters. I could find the plot line. I looked down and saw o had over 300 pages left and didn’t want to keep trying.
cdog859's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0