Incredible first novel for someone so young. It is a wonderful look at the modern world that we all have to find some way to get along with people very different from ourselves. Also a moving look at the harm and benefits of assimilation into mainstream culture and having your children embrace values so foriegn from your own.

I am only part way through the book but feel that I can offer a valuable review.
It is a great read. It is not about one particualr subject rather it deals with a lot of stories that inter-twine.
Its serious and funny and real...in the way it is written and the topics discussed.
I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a great read. By the time I'm finished I'm sure this review will be a 5 instead of a 4.
I also think that Zadie Smith is an author to watch...

I didn't like the book for several reasons. I felt the characters were either underdrawn, overdrawn or were so inconsistant in their behaviour as to be shallow. Examples of this are mostly seen in the twins with Millat, the super gangster, giving up his vices for KEVIN. Why? I was not convinced. And then Magid becomes an apostle to silly, underdrawn Mr. Chalfen. Why?? Joyce is another example as she becomes obsessed with Millat and meddles compulsively in his life. Get a life, Joyce. And how did Irie turn from a snivelling, self conscious unattractive loner to the self confident, organized, active person we see in later chapters? Speaking of characters, the guys in the bar were pointless. Too much was said about them and they added nothing. If it was for local color, the color was gray!

I also found the ending to be silly and contrived. Some reviewers have compared the author to Dickens, perhaps for the intertwining of characters and the coincidences which are his trademarks, but Dickens wrote with a subtle well balanced pen, giving his characters personalities that responded and reacted in believable ways. The coincidence of finding the "doctor" alive and well after so many years and the "drama" of having Samad lose faith in Archie for having let the doctor live....Ugh. A blunt instrument! Who cares? The only likeable character was Clara and after the opening few pages she became a non-entity. This book is poorly written.

This book sucked! I had to read it for my english class, and I had to do a 5 page research paper on it. The language, words, and different plotts do not make any sence to me. How do you find racism, apathy, discrimination, acculturation, dysfuction, and all that in the book. I think it was a bad book just because I couldn't understand it, and now im not going to graduate highschool because i failed my research project... UGH!!! I HATED THIS BOOK!!! IT RUINED MY LIFE!!!
P.S. write something that makes a lot more sence... Z-a-d-i-e... S-m-i-t-h.... ugh!

The concept that really jars me whenever i read White Teeth reviews are the laudations that are thrust upon the writer, Ms Smith, for being 24 years old when she published her remarkable debut.
Mary Shelley, Ben Okri and Charles Dickens were all either twenty one or under twentry one when they published their first remarkable books.
It is a boorish and wholly callous behaviour on the Critics' part to point at Ms Smith's age, because with the exfoliation and the regeneration of Zadie Smith's age circling on the surface, readers will in time forget that White Teeth flipped the script on what we consider to be the archetype of the English novel.
We were introduced to the humourous antics of Samad Iqbal and Archie Jones, complacent Clara and the hilarious Hortense Bowden, Irie, Millat, Magid and the Chalfens.
It is indeed a deeply amiable book: ice cool and with a vibe all of of it's own.
A contemporary classic(if ever there was such a thing) that demonstrates the gifts of an intensely intelligent comic writer who has a particular knack for getting at the heart of it.

All in all, an excellent book.