White Teeth : Zadie Smith

[spacedonkey]

I'm only about halfway through this wonderful book - did anyone else love it?

I think she has the most incredible ear for dialogue. Very funny.

Really didn't like it. Can't remember why...

i really liked it apart from last 100 pages or so, which I thought were pants.

where do think pants ranks in the KS repertoire of literary criticism

I'm halfway through, but am intrigued about the pants ending now!

didn't like White Teeth at all

couldn't get what all the fuss was about

well here's why i like it:

• the characters are rounded
• the dialogue is fabulously written
• the historical context is interesting
• it's funny (i particularly like alsana)

Read it very slowly. Thought it was a bit long winded and didn't call me to bed to read it (nor ever make it down the stairs for "any spare moment reading").
But I found it interesting because I lived in Brick Lane during the troubles she described. Pretty scarey on a couple of occasions, but overall a great place to live (for 3 years before children)

ah well I finished it a few days ago and I thought the ending was excellent!

I read this and enjoyed it felt it was really well written, although I felt it became weak towards the end but where did she get her info re Jehovah's Witnesses? Never read so much bunkum in all my life and if she had carried on much more with it in the first couple of chapters I would have given up completely.

I loved White Teeth. A friend of mine criticised it on the grounds that Smith mocks all of her characters and treats them all with contempt but IMO that doesn't stop her observations about human nature being accurate and interesting.

MrsSpoon I think she chose JWs as they are generally quite uncontroversial politically and not strongly related to any one nation (and that was important as so much of the novel is to do with how race affects our individual lives). I don't think she was getting at JWs in any personal way. It could just have easily been Seventh-Day Adventists or Mormons (in the sense that those faiths are in lots of countries too and are not 'major world religions'.)

Dull, dull, dull. Completely over-rated. (IMHO)

texasrose, I didn't think she was 'getting at' the JWs either but her information on basic teachings was very wrong. Just think if you are going to feature a group of people in a novel you should do your homework first.