Toothsome or tedious?

I kind of sense that the discussion of this book has petered out, but I still thought it mandatory to mention the title "White Teeth" and whether it — and all the oral references, from Clara getting her buck teeth knocked out to Irie's plan to take up dentistry (and all the toothy references in between) resonated with you at all. Clever or heavy-handed?

Christy's pick: "Under the Net"

"Under the Net" is an Iris Murdoch novel, which I read a long time ago. It's sort of an existential romantic comedy with one of literature's best dog characters.

We could start July 5 to give ourselves the holiday weekend to read, if we can't start it sooner.

Men!

Did you get the sense that Zadie Smith took kind of a dim view of men as a group? Did you think her female characters were much more likable on the whole? (I don't mean this to sound like a leading question!)

Comedy?

Maybe this is related to the narrative voice, but how did the overall tone of the book strike you? Did its comic elements take charge and make the book essentially a comedy? Or did the more serious themes still rise to the top for you?

I'll admit at the outset that while I heartily enjoyed many of the book's comic moments, I also found that they somewhat distracted from themes that I wanted to see developed in a more serious, poignant way — like the experience of being a foreigner in a Western country and how you might realistically be driven to violence. We saw a lot of characters who felt displaced and unsettled and we were told how sad and miserable they were, but the comic tone kind of undermined some of that for me.

Supermouse

What did you think of the Supermouse plot line?

Narrator

What did you think of the narrative voice? I was kind of thrown by it sometimes because I couldn't decide whether its tone was consistent. It seemed to veer between semiformal and detached to overly casual and involved. One thing in particular really stood out: its use of slang. For example, when the narrator is talking in the narrator's voice about Millat, it says he "got a lot of pu**y." Isn't that an odd way for the narrator to talk? A character, sure. But the narrator? I've seen this with other authors as well, and it always throws me because it seems like the writer is trying to inject a certain personal, casual tone, trying to lend the narrative voice a kind of hip, young personality or something without committing to an actual embodied creation. It's just a disembodied voice ... Thoughts?

Least favorite

Which character did you think was drawn the least sympathetically? (Maybe that overlaps with "whom did you like the least?" but I can also see it as a different question.)

Plot

Did you find the plot engaging? Did it seem smoothly drawn to you or a bit clunky here and there?

Characters in "White Teeth"

This novel has a fairly large and diverse cast of characters. Which character's point of view do you most identify with? Or were most sympathetic to?