Last week, I really wanted to write about White Teeth by Zadie Smith, but I wanted to wait until I finished it and now that I have finished, I have writer's block and I've started this entry several times to no avail. I couldn't even come up with a clever title for this post, but I am going to try this anyway!
When I started White Teeth I was really enjoying it but upon finishing the book, I feel like it maybe could have been about 200 pages shorter than it was. The middle really just lagged for me, and though I liked the beginning and the end very much, I feel sort of lukewarm about the book as a whole. It reminded me in some ways of Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. The plot was not quite as fantastical as Rushdie's, however, I did still get the feeling that Smith could not tell you about our main character's lives without first telling us of their parents, grandparents, etc. I appreciated the throwback to Rushdie, but I started to feel like it was so obvious that she was almost forcing me to make the connection.
There is also the constant reminder of the title of the book within the book itself. She names chapters after molars and root canals and the white teeth themselves are an indicator of all things "west".
Despite the minor complaints, I did like this novel and I'd give it a 3/5.
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