Zadie Smith’s ‘White Teeth’ is a novel that explores so much: Animal cruelty, genealogy, islamophobia, immigration, lost family and found family, WW2, religious extremism and teeth. Though that was my issue with White Teeth, Zadie Smith tried to explore too much in her book, and split it into four sections with focuses on the two male protagonists, Archie and Samad, and then the latter two sections on their children, Irie and the twins Millat and Magid, this creating so many themes and storylines mashing together and only partially related. A positive is that Smith’s writing style is very easy to read, but ultimately I drew a lot of parallels between White Teeth and another 21st century book on race I read this year, Adichie’s ‘Americanah’, where each had the same flaws: too long for the lack of plot they offer. Ultimately, due to its fragmentary nature, White Teeth didn’t make the most engaging of novels.