One o the most talked about fictional debuts of recent rears, 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 genera tions, 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.

The beginning of Zadie Smith"s debut novel White Teeth is marked by an extraordinary voice：confident, affectionate, satiric, witty． Archibald Jones attempts to kill himself in a car outside a Muslim butchery while pigeons fleeing from the murderous butcher leave streaks of purple excrement across his windshield． Archie"s life is spared by the irate butcher because "． ． ．dying"s no easy trick． And suicide can"t be put on a list of Things to Do in between cleaning the grill pan and leveling the sofa leg with a brick．" This irreverent, comic beginning launches the novel into Archie"s life and into that of his best friend Samad Iqbal． Archie, given a new chance at life, marries the much younger Clara, the daughter of a Jamaican Jehovah Witness mother and a passive, emotionally absent father, while Samad, who is always striving to be a good Muslim, enters into an arranged marriage with Alsana, a woman who was not even born while he fought alongside Archie during World War II． Their children - Irie Jones and the twins Millat and Magrid Iqbal - struggle to find their niche in their overwhelming white British surroundings． If Smith had left her novel at that, at exploring the cultural rifts that divide the families and their cultures, this book would have succeeded admirably; however, the author departs from this course to explore a world that contains a snobbishly intellectual English family, genetic engineering, radical Islam, and the end of the world as predicted by the Jehovah Witnesses． While these separate plots often serve as metaphors for the struggle to assimilate, they simply don"t do enough to engage the reader． The result is a tedious, wholly unfunny second half． Characterizations that were done so well in the beginning become lost in the noise of the rest, making it difficult to care about what happens to Smith"s inventions． Plot turns begin to feel forced, and reactions, unnatural． Most disappointingly, the witty voice of the narrator fades into the background, and is never as strong as it is in the first hundred pages．

The novel owes much to the literary tradition of Victorians such as Dickens and Thackeray, who wrote sweeping novels with comic and/or biting wit． Smith"s range is impressive for a first-time novelist, but her skills and literary instincts are not yet honed enough to carry off the sprawl of such a complex concept． Despite this, her descriptions and characterizations are first-rate, even if they get lost among the rest, and her turns of prose can be astonishing．

This is one of those rare instances when I find it difficult to rate a book using the five star system． White Teeth is an ambitious, unconventional novel that ultimately tries to be too much． Readers who want to keep up on literary trends and celebrities will want to read this, since there is much to admire in Smith"s work． Five stars for the beginning, three stars for the rest．

Acknowledgements xi

Archie 1974, 1945

1. The Peculiar Second Marriage of Archie Jones

2. Teething Trouble 

3. Two Families 

4. Three Coming 

5. The Root Canals of Alfred Archibald Jones

and Samad Miah Iqbal 

Samad 1984, 1857

6. The Temptation of Samad Iqbal 

7. Molars  

8. Mitosis 

9. Mutiny!  

10. The Root Canals of Mangal Pande 

Irie 1990, 1907

11. The Miseducation oflrieJones 

12. Canines: The Ripping Teeth 

13. The Root Canals ofHortense Bowden 

14. More English than the English 

15. Chalfenism versus Bowdenism 

Magid, Millat and Marcus 1992, 1999

16. The Return of Magid Mahfooz Murshed

Mubtasim Iqbal

17. Crisis Talks and Eleventh-hour Tactics