White Teeth (Penguin Celebrations) (Vintage International) (Penguin Ink)

by Zadie Smith

An unforgettable portrait of London and one of the most talked about debuts of all time!

'The almost preposterous talent was clear from the first pages' Guardian

On New Years Day 1975, the day of his almost-suicide, life said yes to Archie Jones. Not OK or 'You-might-as-well-carry-on-since-you've-started'. A resounding affirmative.

Promptly seizing his second life by the horns, Archie meets and marries Clara Bowden, a Caribbean girl twenty-eight years his junior.

Thus begins a tale of friendship, of love and war, of three culture and three families over three generations . . .

*****

'Street-smart and learned, sassy and philosophical all at the same time' New York Times

'Outstanding' Sunday Telegraph

'An astonishingly assured début, funny and serious . . . I was delighted' Salman Rushdie

• ISBN10: 0140276335
• ISBN13: 9780140276336
• Publish Date: 25 January 2001 (first published 27 January 2000)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 560
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/isbn/9780140276336

Reviews

[funbreaker4opal]

FORGET IT. This book is a total slog to get through. It's somehow too dense for me and too thin at the same time. The POV abruptly changes. You're supposed to end the scene when the POV character leaves it. And the thing I hate the most, even though it's only the cherry on the soul-crusher sundae? The needlessly "accented" dialog. Never make your foreigner characters sound like they came out of a restaurant commercial, e.g., an Italian saying "They're-a taking-a my pizza!". It's extremely distracting, always puts cracks in the suspension of disbelief, and is sometimes downright unreadable.