SOURCE: Hodari, Askhari. Review of White Teeth, by Zadie Smith. Black Issues Book Review 2, no. 5 (September–October 2000): 27.

In the following review, Hodari commends the wit, lively spirit, and self-assured narrative of White Teeth, but argues that the novel lacks a strong focus and its ending seems contrived.

Many people, whether they admit it or not, have thought about suicide—have wished, if only momentarily, they were dead. Archibald Jones, a forty-something white man who folds paper for a living, took his desire to the edge of fruition.

As [White Teeth] begins, Archie is sitting locked in a car breathing noxious fumes and waiting for death's doors to open. Instead of ending up in death's arms, he falls into the long, graceful embrace of the beautiful Clara Bowden, a 19-year-old Jamaican Jehovah's Witness who has lost her faith in God. Clara—who had abandoned the teachings of the society...