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White Teeth by Zadie Smith |  If you ever buy this book, I would advise you to jump directly to the second part (chapter 11, the miseducation of Irie Jones) where the story really starts. The first part tells us about the parents of the teenagers we're concerned with in the seconde part. It is interesting but too slow (260 pages for nearly no event!). The interest therefore mainly lies in the next 250 pages, focused on Irie Jones and Millat Iqbal, two British teenagers from foreign descent, who fail to find their real place in the world.
White Teeth is about the disillusion of this generation, without any faith in anything except in pseudo extremist organizations in which they hope to find their real indentity, againt their parents' own paths.
It is highly well written, full of wit and sarcasm.
Enough said, just read this:
“Because choices need time, the fullness of time, time being the horizontal axis of morality – you make a decision and then you wait and see, wait and see. And it's a lovely fantasy, this fantasy of no time (...), the point at which consequences disappear and my action is allowable.”
“Joshua glared up and down Whitehall, at the happy people going about their dress rehearsal. They were all confident that it wouldn't happen or certain they could deal with it if they did. But the world happens to you, thought Joshua, you don't happen to the world. There's nothing you can do. For the first time in his life, he believed that.”
It's quite rare when you read a book to have the feeling that no other words could possibly express the deep interior of ourselves.
I had sometimes this feeling when reading White Teeth. It's a pretty good sign.
My rating: 3/5 |
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