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The Wisdom of White Teeth

Zadie Smith’s debut novel is an act of drilling a hole to the root

Mallika Vasak
Pomegranates
3 min readMar 4, 2024

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The story starts with a man attempting suicide in the local butcher’s parking lot, getting shooed away due to the owner not having a license for him to commit the act on his property. “No one gasses themselves [here],” Mo, the butcher, tells Archie. “If you’re going to die around here, I’m afraid you’ve got to be thoroughly bled first.”

This is Zadie Smith’s wit and brilliance summed up in the first sentences of her debut novel.

White Teeth is the most colourful chronicle of fate and free will that I’ve read, with characters so rich in their histories, complex in their dispositions. There’s Archie, a 47-year-old Englishman and recent divorcee who makes a living as a professional paper folder. His new wife, Clara Bowden, is a Jamaican woman whose estranged mother, Hortense, is persistent in her wait for the last day on earth. Their daughter Irie, who plans to become a dentist, holds insecurities about her weight and mixed-race identity. She’s in love with one of Archie’s best friend’s sons Millat, a twin who spirals down the rabbit hole of drug indulgence, womanizing, and rebellion, ultimately landing at Islamic extremism. His twin Magid, on the other side of the coin, is studious in his pursuit of law and science. Their father, Samad…

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