White Teeth
Smith wrote it at 24, which is almost offensive. Three families in North London (Bangladeshi, Jamaican, English) collide across generations in this 2000 debut. The novel captures multicultural Britain with more energy and wit than any sociological study could manage. It announced a major talent.
The last third abandons the households for organizations and factions converging on a single public event, and readers who galloped through the first two-thirds call that ending mechanical. The narrator is the other problem, “far too pleased with herself,” undercutting her own people for a cheap laugh instead of staying with them. Three families produce more viewpoints than depth, and Alsana and Clara lose their interior lives the moment they become mothers. The “phonetic spelling to get across accents” reads as condescension to several readers, who find the cast reduced to “stereotypical one-dimensional shadow puppets.” A harder line traces the acclaim to the advance: “Zadie Smith was a literary ad-man’s dream.”
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
