White Teeth
by Zadie Smith
Random House

When a 24-year-old recent college graduate eschews minimalist fiction, shuns autobiographical fiction, and writes a thick, sweeping novel in the grand tradition of the epic, it's noteworthy.

In Zadie Smith's case, it's brilliant.

"White Teeth," Smith's first novel, tackles such weighty issues as race, identity, history, religion and culture. And Smith presents them right up front, not hiding them behind crafty metaphors or cryptic symbolism. This is a novel set squarely in the global age, where Jamaican women marry English men, where Bengali children lose their culture on the streets of London, where gene pools mix like fruit smoothies in a blender.

"White Teeth" concerns two vastly different North London families, both fumbling along, trying to maintain some sense of identity in a world swirling around them. Archie Jones — native Englishman, paper-folder, secular — and Samad Iqbal — native Bengali, waiter, Muslim — are best friends, having met during an ill-fated campaign through Eastern Europe during World War II.

Both Archie and Samad have wives: Archie a toothless Jamaican beauty named Clara; Samad a boisterous and powerful woman named Alsana, whom he married in a prearranged union. Archie and Clara have a child whom they name Irie, which is Jamaican for 'no problem' (and a synonym for Ireland, which Smith curiously never mentions in the book). Samad and Alsana have twin boys, Magid — brainy and loyal — and Millat — dashing, pot-smoking and sex-having by age 13.

Smith wields this cast of characters with a wonderfully idiosyncratic voice. It's her first novel, but even so, it's vintage Zadie Smith. She tints each sentence, it seems, with an undercurrent of humor. She has such a firm grasp on her characters, that her narrative voice actually pokes fun at them on the page.

"Masturbation recommenced in earnest," the narration reads, just after Samad has become enamored of a schoolteacher. "Those two months, between seeing the pretty redhaired music teacher and seeing her again, were the longest, stickiest, smelliest, guiltiest fifty-six days of Samad's life, and this led to the kind of masturbation that even a fifteen-year-old boy living in the Shetlands might find excessive."

If there is one thing "White Teeth" could use, it is probably an editor. Smith is a wee bit longwinded at times. She flashes back to Archie and Samad's war exploits, and it goes on for 30 pages. It's not an insignificant section of the novel, but neither is it a central one. It could have been shorter. Even so, Smith's fresh voice and rich language make fun reading out of even the most inconsequential parts of the novel. She's just damn funny, and damn smart — that's all there is to it.

Whereas Don Delillo, most recently the author of "Underworld," deciphers contemporary American culture, Smith (remember, she's just 24) follows a similar path by interpreting and dramatizing contemporary global culture. And, fortunately or unfortunately, Western capitalism and secularism are infecting the globe. Smith knows it. But the ironic tone in "White Teeth" says that our loss of roots, perhaps our loss of any indigenous identity, is not necessarily something to lament. It is something you laugh at, and then save yourself from succumbing to it.

— Ben Welch (bwelch@english.umass.edu)