last night i finally finished up white teeth by zadie smith. this book won like the national book award and i am not quite sure why.

it’s an enjoyable read. but at 448 pages, it meanders quite a bit. cutting out about 100 pages would have made it so much better. i really liked irie jones and wish we would have spent more time with her or her mom clara. instead we spend gobs and gobs of time with archie jones and samad iqbal– two old men. zzzzzzzz.

of course it probably won the book award because ms. smith is all of 25 or 26 years old. kinda astonishing. still. . .

i read this great article after i finished the book. i like what this author has to say. how smith seemed like something sparkly and new after a year of chick lit.

heh, chick lit. i ate it up at first. bridget jones, the girls guide to hunting and fishing, waltzing the cat. i ate them all up, but quickly grew tired of the repetitiveness. that whole phenomena reminded me of the grunge music scene circa 1992 or so. you know, once nirvana broke through every record company in the galaxy was signing a band from seattle. hoping to cash in on the success.

the same thing happened in books after the release of bridget jones. suddenly everyone wanted to read about single women and how they keep on keepin’ on. just like the grunge thing, we got watered down versions of nirvana. i think of all the chick lit books i stumbled upon, girls guide to hunting and fishing was the most disappointing. it’s one of those books that made me angry. just generally pissed me off because things weren’t adding up.

i like things to add up. in girls guide there was a totally unrelated and pointless chapter about some guy we’d never heard of before and never heard from again. at that point i was ready to toss the book right out the window. but i perservered, for naught really. but then there is a part of me that likes bad books. bad books make me think there is hope for me. i mean if these schlocky tales can make it into print surely i could come up with something even better.

yeah.

so is white teeth worth the 448 pages? i think so. the ending is rewarding. so that makes up for all the muddiness in the middle. plus it’s just fun to read about characters living through recent history (a lot of the novel takes place in 1990).