Ryan’s freckles were a join-the-dot enthusiast’s wet dream.

Especially when she has her own past to contend with. Though a White man marrying a Black woman came with its own set of teething problems. Gladly because he soon marries nineteen-year-old Clara Iphigenia Bowden and realises that there was a life for him after all the bitterness of his first marriage. Gladly, he’s stopped by Mo Hussein-Ishmael who owns and runs a halal shop nearby. Set in Willesden Green, it starts with forty-seven-year-old loner Alfred Archibald ‘Archie’ Jones, who’s committing suicide on the morning of 1 January 1975. It is divided into four parts of five chapters each concerning the two men and their children. It is the first novel I’m reading by Zadie Smith which is also her debut novel. Consider this book a story of not only two generations, but their respective pasts and futures as well. I bet you have seen a family tree (this also has one, or two) once in your life. And yet in the middle of it all, the fast friendship of an Englishman and a Bangladeshi survives and thrives. But, but, but, it gets even more interesting because it is not simply a story, rather a clash of cultures, of races, of generations, of the very history of their existence. White Teeth is their story as well as the story of their better-halves, whose ages are less than half their ages respectively and their children, the future generation. Friends who have fought or not and got out of the War with their mind and body intact. Samad and Archie are two wartime buddies, since 1945, who are as thick as friends can be.

Date of Publication of the edition: 12 June 2001

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