White Teeth

I never did find out what the ‘White Teeth’ of the title referred to. Was this an allusion to the plans of one of the characters to become a dentist? Or that the book was a tale of three families and their ‘roots’. Indeed, one character does have their upper teeth knocked out in a bizarre Vespa and oak tree incident, or is it just the one thing that all the characters have in common? Looking back, it does seem to be that the history’s of each character is described as his/her root-canal. Not an allegory that works particularly well I think.

White Teeth is about three modern families: the Iqbals, post-war Bengali immigrants; the Joneses, one a frumpy Londoner and his unfeasibly young Jamaican bride; and the Chalfens, the last in a long line of wandering European Israelites.

Most of the characters worked for me, apart for Archie Jones. This character was supposed to be dull and ununteresting, and was. This made his whirlwind romance, and marriage, to a young girl of west indian descent, (20ish years his junior), too unbelieveable for me. The Iqbals were charaterised really well. The 1st generation dad, the young, arranged bride, and thier two sons. The way in which one veered to the secular, scientific, west, and the other to the hip, bangla, sassy, and eventually fundamentalist. I loved the jehovah's witness Jamacan Mother , and her story. The Chalfen's were fabulous, too, in a pseudo trendy liberal way that some families seem to develop

The tale begins when Archie Jones meets Samad Miah Iqbal when they are both posted to the ‘buggered battalion’ of misfits and ne’er do wells of the Royal Engineers. It is the latter stages of WWII and eventually they become firm friends, sharing a dark secret that they will carry through their lives. The novel then charts their lives; marriages, divorces and the lives of their children, who eventually get mixed up with the Chalfen family of mixed Catholic/Jewish roots. The book ends in one of those slightly forced set pieces, where all of the disparate come together in one unbelievable finale.

Overall I found the book entertaining. The insight into the life of a Bengali Muslim family, struggling to come to terms with the difference in values between the old ways and modern British secular ways was very well done. There were several ideas that rang true to me from my personal observations of first and second generation Bengali’s in Swansea. I think the story was very believable and not far from the truth for many British Bengali’s. The characterisation of how Islam was entwined in the lives of the Iqbals seemed very authentic the dichotomy between secularism and fanaticism, east and west, British and Muslim.

As for the Jamaican experience in Britain, this was also believable although I have no personal experience of this history. The descriptions seemed very real and plausible and the research very thorough.

I suppose really that this is about the legacy of Britain’s colonial past, the history of Britain in the Indian sub-continent, the Caribbean and even Europe after WWII. It shows how these past actions run through and effect our lives today and are still influencing the way we live and the problems we face and the issues we are still struggling with.

I'd Give it 7/10 overall, a good read, tacking some interesting modern issues.