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La prosa di Zadie Smith è una caramella che si scioglie in bocca e fa esplodere una cuccagna di sapori. L’ibridazione stilistica di Denti bianchi fa sfilare davanti al lettore, capitolo dopo capitolo, la caricatura satirica accanto al dramma, il genere della saga familiare con quello meta-storico, fino alla fantascienza. La scelta di macedonizzare il romanzo per temi e stile è il prodotto della lettura di certi maestri postmodernisti. In primis, Salman Rushdie. Sia per un certo gusto nel raccontare la storia dell’India, che fa capolino tra le pagine di Denti bianchi, ma soprattutto per l’uso vivacissimo delle digressioni, della lingua mescolata e per l’ironia funambolica. C’è anche qualcosa di Pynchon nell’uso umoristico delle sigle e degli acronimi (KEVIN e FATE). Ma soprattutto c’è la voce grintosa di Zadie Smith che pungola, commuove, azzarda.
So I very highly recommend this read and as for a reunion sequel? Yes, please. That would be a definite pre-buy for me. : ) Zadie Smith was born in the working class suburb of Willesden in northwest London in 1975. Her mother emigrated to the U.K. from Jamaica in 1969 and married an Englishman thirty years her senior. Smith, who changed her name from Sadie to "Zadie" at fourteen, was fond of tap dancing and jazz singing but deemed writing to be a more attainable career path. She graduated from King's College, Cambridge with a degree in English, several short stories published in the college literary collection and a novel, White Teeth, which she was offered a six-figure advance on when she was 21. Its critical and commercial success made Smith an international literary sensation. She lives in Kilburn, London with her husband and two children. Anyway, this was definitely a unique book on parenthood and relationships. A bit more specifically, it’s about an unlikable couple (I honestly couldn’t tell if I was supposed to like them) who are a mess and feel extra pressure to present the perfect image as a gay couple under additional scrutiny just for said gayness, and their sort of monstrous child who doesn’t help matters. Even though this story was labeled as glbt, you could say it was, and it was not. It's just portrays one of those relationships where it is more like a friendship which goes just a bit above the friendship level. Or in other words - it's complicated. When I was a kid, I always felt like I needed to keep her safe. She was made of marshmallows and candy canes and she knew twenty hundred lullabies.Enter Teeth, a.k.a. fishboy. He is a half-teenage boy, half-fish. He swims around the waters of the island, protecting the magic Enki fish. He also can't breathe underwater, and he speaks good English, but sometimes replaces words he doesn't know with "whatever". I admit to being frustrated with this book sometimes because I just wanted Sammie to get herself together. But once you have that full picture, especially with its little gutpunch of an ending, you see that Arnett has been doing more than you realized all along. The longer I sit with it, the more I like it. Though it's so stressful to read that it's a lot easier to enjoy it when it's no longer stressing you out. It has just rained and the sky is the colour of a cantaloupe melon. The clouds are bruised lemons and I'm sitting beneath an orange tree. I'm writing in my journal, wondering who collects the oranges when they fall from the trees and what happens to them afterwards. Have a chat with children. Sit down with your little ones and have a light-hearted discussion about how and why we need to look after our teeth. Explaining why brushing our teeth is important to fight off plaque and bacteria will help children understand why they have to do something that might seem boring. There's the undeniable truth of centuries of conditioned servility, hatred of the power which established the ground rules of the abusive relationship called colonialism, and the unfathomable responsibility of bearing the burden of yesterday.
White Teeth is an expansive, detailed, and beautifully written attempt to encapsulate the social chaos that blossoms at the bridging of generational, national and sexual mindsets. It reminds me very much of the freeflowing histories written by Marquez and Allende, as well as Salman Rushdie's strange little one-off treatise on cultural alienation, Fury. (Samad, in particular, reminds me quite a bit of Fury's Malik Solanka.) From the author of the New York Times-bestselling sensation Mostly Dead Things a surprising and moving story of two mothers, one difficult son, and the limitations of marriage, parenthood, and loveI had no idea what this book was about until after I was approved. I was amused by the description but I'm always open-minded about reading different things. A book about a gay fishboy? Yes please! I went into this with high hopes and I have to say, I was not disappointed. Jessica Andrews strikes again 😍 This is a very queer novel that is not about being queer and does not have much by way of queer suffering. (There are references to Sammie's evangelical childhood and her estranged relationships with her parents.) While Monika and Sammie's marriage flounders in a way that's familiar, the way they deal with it is very queer, and that rings true for me. For me, Sammie was very relatable, as I am also a technically femme queer pushing middle age who doesn't fit into any of the categories femme queers are supposed to fit into. I’m not gonna drop the horse talk because I don’t know where that’s come from and I’m also scared of horses. Instead, let’s get on with Milk Teeth.
A fantastic book that shows the whole family going to the dentist and is a great introduction to the Tooth Fairy. There are some really interesting themes - the feelings of a shared identity when a relationship deepens - how do we share our lives but separate our beings? And there is also plenty of chilling nostalgia around the industrialised body shaming, diet culture and magazine headlines from the mid 00s. The notion that taking up space (both literally, physically, and metaphorically through opinions and advocating for yourself) is a radical act and a really hard one to master after years of being told by society that you have to change yourself to be worthy, is really powerful. I loved a phrase used which was that our protagonist is desperately trying to be a person who is “unafraid of pleasure” Here we’ve got an unnamed female protagonist who had a very average yet happy upbringing in the north of England. She’s also been surrounded by diet culture, including miss “oh wow that’s so lovely” Cassie from Skins and being taught that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. Reader, I can confirm Kate Moss must not have 1. eaten almond croissants or 2. experienced any joy when she infamously said this. It is a big deal but I don’t know how to explain it. I want you to know how integral it has been to the way I move through the world, how I learned to push shame and anger deep into by body and yet speaking about it brings it into the present, when all I want is to leave it behind. This is the first book I've read by this author. I've heard people praise her and from what I've seen on goodreads, she seems like an awesome human being. So when I saw this on Edelweiss, I decided to request it. I didn't think I'd get approved because I always seem to get denied when it comes to the books I really want. But I got it!un generale senso di eccesso, di esagerazione, di mancanza di misura, che spinge Smith a cercare il paradosso (eccentrico?) e forse perfino il grottesco. Who eats too much sugar, leading to dental trauma? Primarily the poor. Who cannot sleep because of continuing dental pain and no available dental care? Primarily the poor. Even with Medicare and Medicaid, dental care has remained a stepchild—and these programs are in jeopardy now. ‘The teeth are no match for . . . a life of poverty,’ Otto says. More teeth failure and its consequences are on their way.” —Peter Edelman Sesame Street characters take them on a pop-up adventure all about brushing teeth and visiting the dentist! Though it starts with a lot of action, this isn't a plot book. It's a character study and a very good one, which also makes it hard to read a lot of the time. But by the end of the book you know Sammie so well that you can see her situation clearly. Maybe not all that much about Sammie has changed by the time the book is over, but as a reader your view of everything in Sammie's life changes a lot. For a great review of White Teeth which eloquently puts the case against, whilst trying not to, see Ben's review here
And something small and insignificant inside me shatters, just like every night, and feelings hit too hard for me to stand. I bend at the waist and cling to the windowsill. I won't scream. I won't throw myself against the walls until the supports give and we fall into the ocean. I won't think about swimming as hard as I can.
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A beautiful story nonetheless and a story which makes you think - really think - about what humanity is able to do to things they don't understand. And that there are always others who rise above that level. But the themes in Teeth are significantly darker than they were in Gone, Gone, Gone, making me hesitant to recommend it to those unable to cope with issues of serious and repetitive sexual abuse. Teeth is dark. Teeth is very, very gothic and depressing and sad. Sometimes I wondered if it was too sad, too dark, too emotive. There’s very little cheer and fun to be had in it. But it turns out it’s just the right amount of dark, sad and emotive for me because I still loved it. As the book mentions, it's all about sacrificing for someone else what you would *never* sacrifice for yourself.
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