Friday, December 22, 2006
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
After I stay up late devouring a book, my invariable question to myself in the morning is: Was it worth it? I put this question to myself this morning with less intensity then I usually do (because usually it is a school day and I feel like death in the morning, and usually, of late, the books themselves have not been worth it)and was really expecting the answer to be No, it was not.
After waking up at eleven o'clock on six hours of sleep, however, (do the math– I haven't stayed up this late since sophmore year for anything) and with the disconcerting memory of having been about a hundred pages from the end while hearing my brother get up and go open his work, I was surprised to find the answer was Yes, it was.
On several levels I disagreed with myself, reasons namely being: too much swearing, too much sex, even though it was non-explicit, and too much swearing (sometimes it seemed like every other word was the f-word)
But the book is so well-crafted, so clever, so funny at times; the characters were real, and the scale was grand; the first page made me pay attention, the last page made me smile; I liked how she countered her Jehovah's Witness character with her radical Muslim cult characters (suggesting that both were too extreme); overall it represented some of the human condition and to boot, it left me with a good taste in my mouth.
So the answer this morning was Yes, it was.
Will I read it again? Probably not. There was just too much swearing. I do recommend it, however, to readers unafraid of profanity.
And that is the end of that.
After waking up at eleven o'clock on six hours of sleep, however, (do the math– I haven't stayed up this late since sophmore year for anything) and with the disconcerting memory of having been about a hundred pages from the end while hearing my brother get up and go open his work, I was surprised to find the answer was Yes, it was.
On several levels I disagreed with myself, reasons namely being: too much swearing, too much sex, even though it was non-explicit, and too much swearing (sometimes it seemed like every other word was the f-word)
But the book is so well-crafted, so clever, so funny at times; the characters were real, and the scale was grand; the first page made me pay attention, the last page made me smile; I liked how she countered her Jehovah's Witness character with her radical Muslim cult characters (suggesting that both were too extreme); overall it represented some of the human condition and to boot, it left me with a good taste in my mouth.
So the answer this morning was Yes, it was.
Will I read it again? Probably not. There was just too much swearing. I do recommend it, however, to readers unafraid of profanity.
And that is the end of that.
