White Teeth by Zadie Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I first read White Teeth somewhere around 2005, and 13 years later it still holds up. Crackling wit, vivid descriptions, and characters that come to life. Smith nails dialogue as if she were transcribing conversations between the most interesting people in the room, and her narration is operating at full authorial confidence. This time around my favorite parts of the story were watching Archie and Samad bumble into middle-age, and Clara and Alsana sagely put up with them. I realize that means I’m old. Children spin out of these relationships, and though the novel takes a slightly preposterous turn to bring them all back together in the end, the conclusion nonetheless delivers the satisfying one-two punch of a real ending (and even managed to surprise me in my second reading).