White Teeth - [short] Book Review
Smith’s debut novel White Teeth is a book that deals with contrasts: past vs present; homeland vs foreign land; fact vs fiction; science vs religion. The book, taking place in mid to late 20th century Britain, follows the story of two war-time good friends, Archie and Samad and their detached families.
I encounter quite few novels that are funny and witty, and Smith’s White Teeth is one of them. I loved every part of the book; it made me laugh, it left me in awe and at some points left me in complete shock too, but in an amusing way. Additionally, I found Smith’s writing very easy to follow, nothing so complicated. Her use of words made the reading process swift and easily understandable.
The story begins with Archibald — short for Archie — attempting suicide in his car after his mentally disturbed wife decides to leave him but he is interrupted by other working people for parking his car in the occupied space. As if brought back to life, old Archie goes to 1975 New Year’s Eve party where he meets a 19-year-old Jamaican named Clara, who would later become his wife. They have a daughter named Irie. Archie’s Bangladeshi Muslim friend Samad Iqbal also lives in London with his younger wife Alsana and soon twin boys, Millat and Magid.
As mentioned, the book takes place in Britain in the mid to late 20th century when racism against immigrants was still prevalent. Frankly, as a Pakistani, the racial slurs used in the novel came to me first as a surprise then disgust followed by pain. Despite Samad and his family being Bangladeshi, the racists around them used slurs made against Pakistanis because of their brown skin tone. This illustrates that the racists are not bothered with the identity of a person and their viewpoint is solely limited to how South Asians have the similar skin tone. Hence, perfectly describing racism.
Apart from this, the book focuses on the past vs present problem. In fact, it’s the characters that focus on the past and the present. Samad, for instance, cannot seem to let anyone forget that his “great-grandfather” Mangal Pandey was the one who started the Indian Rebellion in 1857 with a bullet but ended up missing it. Despite being provided with evidence by Archie and others that his “great-grandfather” was drunk when he fired the bullet which led to deaths of many people, Samad refuses to believe any of it and considers them a slander. His belief in something that occurred in the past, a word that was passed to him from someone’s mouth shows that he wants to be as renowned as Mangal Pandey but he’s nothing more than a waiter at a restaurant.
And when the notion of injecting a mouse with chemical carcinogens in order to view the growth of tumor and learn the development of cancer seems to grow attention, Samad and many other characters are against this idea. Samad, Millat and his religious fundamentalist group members, and Hortense (Clara’s mother, devoted to be Jehovah’s Witness) are not really thinking about the future that would be cancer-free but an afterlife that wouldn’t even be granted to them.
However, when Irie says “it’s in the past”, it is not entirely true towards the end when Samad and Archie discover the scientist and doctor behind the ‘FutureMouse’ plan is the same Nazi doctor that Archie couldn’t kill back in WWII. Sometimes your past does catch up to you, just as it did for Archie. It makes one think that if he had killed the doctor all those years ago, none of them would be protesting against this project. But that does not mean that another scientist wouldn’t have come up with this idea though.
Aside from this, Smith touches on how being in a foreign land for Samad poses a lot of problems, such as he starts masturbating or drinking alcohol or having an affair with his twins’ music teacher, all that goes against his Islamic principles. Just so his smart son Magid doesn’t turn out like him, he basically kidnaps him and sends him off to Bangladesh so he could connect with the culture and religion there. But much to Samad’s disappointment, Magid turns out to be an atheist and his other son Millat is much worse than his twin brother because of his active sexual life with various girls and participation in a religious fundamentalist group. While Samad would say that his children are rebellious, they would argue their father is an old-fashioned man, still stuck in the past and waiting for an imaginary future.
I do dislike Samad’s character a lot. He verbally abuses timid Archie a lot and he’s a hypocrite when it comes to religion. It is not the foreign society that leads to the corruption of his Muslim standards but it is entirely his fault that he masturbates, that he drinks, that he had an affair; projecting his problems on a society is much easier than taking accountability.
I personally loved Smith’s White Teeth a lot. There are only a few books you come across that are raw, witty and funny, which leave a lasting impact on you. I would recommend everyone to read this book at least once in their lifetime, and would recommend you go in with an open mind.
Smith’s White Teeth tells the tale of three generations, each separated from one another despite being together. Every family has their own share of problems, and every individual in the family as well, however, in the end they will all come together. Forcing an opinion of any kind over others helps neither them nor you. They don’t have to necessarily agree with you over every single thing but they should learn to respect it and see that you value something that is significant to you. Every little emotion a member of a family feels towards another is an example of a bond. Family, in happiness, sadness and even in disappointment, is still connected together.
tw/ racial slurs.
