White Teeth -Mirrani's book 1 of 2012

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White Teeth -Mirrani's book 1 of 2012

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1mirrani
Jan 14, 2012, 4:10 pm

Still haven't decided how best to title these darn things. I want to make sure we know what's going on... but anyway...

I've gotten time to read up to page 30 and this book is a lot like the way I write... only it goes all the way through while I tend to stop being so creative and become generic. So I'm quite impressed.

Some lines that I've come across early on:

"It was his forth trip to the attic in so many days, ferrying the odds and ends of a marriage out to his new flat, and the Hoover was one of the last items he reclaimed--one of the most broken things, most ugly things, the things you demand out of sheer bloody-mindedness because you have lost the house. This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love."

"All broken things were coming with him. He was going to fix every damn broken thing in this house, if only to show that he was good for something."

Both of those are on page 8, one at the top, one near the bottom, and they obviously deal with the same things, I just thought they were worded well, combining the emotion and the event into one written element.

2cedargrove
Jan 15, 2012, 11:16 am

Maybe I'm biased but I see the way that you carry through both the emotion and the event in a written piece in just the same way that this author has in the two parts that you quoted.

Anyway, you're right that they carry the emotion well in the words that are chosen. They're very engaging. I like that the connection between the two follows through so that it's there at the top and bottom of the same page too, I think that's a very clever thing to do. :)

3mirrani
Jan 15, 2012, 12:48 pm

No, that's not what I said, I said I could do it, but can't do it all the way through whatever I write, the way this one does.

And I'm not sure what you're talking about in regards to the page. If you mean that having a situation carry through from the top to the bottom... that happens on every page in every book.

4cedargrove
Jan 16, 2012, 1:18 pm

That's what I meant, and if it happens on every page in the book, then that's good.

5mirrani
Jan 21, 2012, 8:13 pm

Just a note before I get in to quoting the book as I've come to it so far... Reading about having an affair and all of the emotions around it while listening to a lullaby about sweet love and lingering together until you're older... /really/ isn't the best combination. It puts both /way/ out of context in their own regard.

And now, on to the quotes as I have come to them...
"There was a bit of a difficult pause, in which Samad saw clearly that he wanted her more than any woman he had met in the past ten years. Just like that. Desire didn't even bother casing the joint, checking whether the neighbors were in--desire just kicked down the door and made himself at home." p 112

"Half thoughts. Stick them all together and you have less than you begin with." p 151

"If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein, and a needle, tradition is a far homelier concoction: poppy seeds ground into tea; a sweet cocoa drink laced with cocaine; the kind of thing your grandmother might have made." p 161

"Years from now, even hours after that plane leaves, this will be history that Samad tries not to remember. That his memory makes no effort to retain. A sudden stone submerged. False teeth floating silently to the bottom of a glass." p174 (Context: he is sending his 'oldest' -he has twins- off to live with his family overseas and it's basically a kidnapping, against his will and without his knowledge.)

"'It just goes to show,' said Alsana, revealing her English tongue, 'you go back and back and back and it's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.'" p196

"'That girl,' tutted Alsana as her front door slammed. 'Swallowed an encyclopedia and a gutter at the same time.'" p200

"There's no smoke without fire. There was something so vulnerable in the way he relied on this conviction, that Samad had never had the heart to disabuse him of it. Whey tell an old man that there can be smoke without fire as surely as there are deep wounds that draw no blood?" p209

"When a man has nothing but his blood to commend him, each drop of it matters, matters terribly; it must be jealously defended. It must be protected against assailants and detractors. It must be fought for." p212

Other notable moments I've come across...

On page 168 there was a description of a woman riding the tube, who had gotten on and was crying. No one did anything for her, with her or to her, but she rode all the way to the end of the line then turned and went on the tube back again. Along the way she pulled out a photo of her man and showed it to Samad, one of the main characters who is the one worried about cheating on his wife at the moment and the end of all that... It's described so well, but this bit here...

I have to put all of this down, it's necessary, honest:
"To Alsana's mind, the real difference between people was not color. Nor did it lie in gender, faith, their relative ability to dance to a syncopated rhythm or open their fists to reveal a handful of gold coins. The real difference was far more fundamental. It was in the earth. It was in the sky. You could divide the whole of humanity into two distinct camps, as far as she was concerned, simply by asking them to complete a very simple questionnaire, of the kind you find in Woman's Own on a Tuesday:

(a) Are the skies you sleep under likely to open up for weeks on end?
(b) Is the ground you walk on likely to tremble and split?
(c) Is there a chance (and please check the box, no matter how small that chance seems) that the ominous mountain casting a midday shadow over your home might one day erupt with no rhyme or reason?

Because if the answer is yes to one or all of these questions, then the life you lead is a midnight thing, always a hair's breadth from the witching hour; it is volatile, it is threadbare; it is carefree in the true sense of that term; it is light, losable like a key ring or a hair clip. And it is lethargy: why not sit all morning, all day, all year, under the same cypress tree drawing the figure eight in the dust? More than that, it is disaster, it is chaos: why not overthrow a government on a whim, why not blind the man you hate, why not go mad, go gibbering through the town like a loon, waving your hands, tearing your hair? There's nothing to stop you--or rather anything could stop you, any hour, any minute." p175-176 (context: this is happening on the opposite page from the sending away of their son)

"'Why he leave? He break my heart ... Neil, he say his name, Neil. Neil, Neil.'

At Charing Cross, end of the line, Samad watched her cross the platform and get the train going straight back to Willesden Green. Romantic, in a way. The way she said 'Neil' as if it were a word bursting at the seams with past passion, with loss. That kind of flowing, feminine misery."

And I'm not going to quote it, because it's too long every time, but ANY time O'Connell's Poolroom is described, it's plain awesome. /I/ want to go there... though I think I'd be unwelcome. :) There's an equation about it on page 203, though... (If I can get it to translate in the post...)

Time spent here
_____________ Enjoyment X Masochism= Reason why I am a regular

Time that I could
have usefully
spent elsewhere

Or you might get a bit of it in this... off page 210...
"Often you see old men in the corner of dark pubs, discussing and gesticulating, using beer mugs and salt cellars to represent long-dead people and far-off places. At that moment they display a vitality missing in every other area of their lives. They light up. Unpacking a full story onto the table--here is Churchill-fork, over there is Czechoslovakia-napkin, here we find the accumulation of German troops represented by a collection of cold peas--they are reborn. But when Archie and Samad had these table-top debates during the eighties, knives and forks were not enough. The whole of the steamy Indian summer of 1857, the whole of that year of mutiny and massacre would be hauled into O'Connell's and brought to semiconsciousness by those two makeshift historians. The area stretching from the jukebox to the fruit machine became Delhi; Viv Richards silently complied as Pande's English superior, Captain Hearsay; Clarence and Denzel continued to play dominoes while simultaneously being cast as the restless sepoy hordes of the British army. Each man brought the pieces of his argument, laid them out, and assembled them for the other to see. Scenes were set. Paths of bullets traced. Disagreement reigned.

Whew. That was long! :)

6mirrani
Jan 25, 2012, 6:21 pm

So I'm reading today and I get ticked off by the way this new family has come into things. You know, you just want to kick people sometimes. This new uppity family, the Chalfens, are taking the two kids from these two families and with the attitude of "oh you poor children whose parents don't know how to care for you any better" are trying to convert them to education and whatnot. It's one thing for their son to be "friends" of theirs, but it's a whole other story for them to be converting them, using them and whatnot. I have several quotes from today's reading, but the one from page 293 sums it up nicely...

"'It's a grand old family, and if you don't find it too presumptuous, Clara--is 'Clara' all right?'

'Clara's fine, Mrs. Chalfen.'

Irie waited for Joyce to ask Clara to call her Joyce."

Of course, the woman didn't. Typical. This family is really rubbing me the wrong way. I don't know that they're supposed to, but they are. On the other hand, you just want to laugh at their obvious stupidity in things. Geez!

I'll post other quotes another time. Too caught up in reading right now to do it. :)

7cedargrove
Jan 25, 2012, 8:25 pm

Slowly getting caught up on these posts - thanks to horrible internet connection - anyway... onwards and upwards.

One of my favourite quotes you've included so far has been the one about religion and tradition. It felt so right to me at the time I read that - I really connected with it, so yeah, I liked that very much

I can see why you want to go to O'Connell's (unfortunate name there, btw), but I have to confess that reading the quote that you put in there about the place, I found myself thinking about Julian and Miles and the place as Quark's bar. I guess I've been thinking about DS9 too much or something. LOL It's good though - I guess in a way it shows that the writer can appeal to, or reach readers in any number of ways.

About that: all the quotes you have included paint the picture of a book that tugs at various parts of the heartstrings and really gets the reader involved in what's being written about... the one about the woman on the train for example, or the one about the family - so ignorant it's not even funny, yes, I can see what that ticked you off - really speak to the readers' own experience... even if you haven't been in the exact same situation, it's well written enough for you to be able to say, 'wow, yeah, I get that...'

I'm glad you're sharing these quotes with us, because it makes me think that maybe I'd like to read this book at some point.

Have you been listening to anything while reading?

8mirrani
Jan 25, 2012, 10:13 pm

Only listening to stuff at nap time and I haven't been in charge of that soundtrack, so not really... just the one mention of reading about the affair while listening to a love lullaby not being a good idea.

9mirrani
Jan 26, 2012, 6:24 pm

There is something to be said for reading about a new year celebration on New Year's Day... Of course it was Chinese new year, but does that really matter? ;) So this week's reading has brought me nearly to the end of the book. I've taken a lot of notes and enjoyed the downfall of this snooty woman who has taken the children away from their families because it's just "better" for them. I will share all below...

Describing a hair salon/barber shop...
"P.K's was split into two halves, male and female. In the male section, as relentless Ragga came unevenly over a battered stereo, young boys had logos cut into the backs of their heads at the hands of slightly older boys, skillful wielders of the electric trimmers. ADIDAS. BADMUTHA. MARTIN. The male section was all laughter, all talk, all play; there was an easiness that sprang from no male haircut ever costing over six pounds or taking more than fifteen minutes. It was a simple-enough exchange and there was joy in it: the buzz of the revolving blade by your ear, a rough brush-down with a warm hand, mirrors front and back to admire the transformation. You came in with a picky head, uneven and coarse, disguised underneath a baseball cap, and you left swiftly afterward a new man, smelling sweetly of coconut oil and with a cut as sharp and clean as a swearword.

In comparison, the female section of P.K's was a deathly thing. Here, the impossible desire for straightness and "movement" fought daily with the stubborn determination of the curved African follicle; here ammonia, hot combs, clips pins, and simple fire had all been enlisted in the war and were doing their damnedest to beat each curly hair into submission." p229

Quoting from a book by the mother who has taken away these kids...
"The birds and the bees, the thick haze of pollen--these are all to be encouraged! Yes, selfpollination is the simpler and more certain of the two fertilization processes, especially for many species that colonize by copiously repeating the same parental strain. But a species cloning such uniform offspring runs the risk of having its entire population wiped out by a single evolutionary event. In the garden, as in the social and political arena, change should be the only constant. Our parents and our parents' petunias have learned this lesson the hard way. The March of History is unsentimental, tramping over a generation and its annuals with ruthless determination." p257-258

There was much more of that book quotation and I enjoyed the way the whole thing was written, but that struck me the most, I think... Along with the description of the delphiniums she was growing...(Garter Knight Delphiniums) which were obviously her own breed because there's only mention of it in the book and not on the net. Shame, they sounded beautiful. Really, all of the garden things about her were written well, but sadly they stopped after a short time. It would have been nice to have had them continue, even if her personality had changed because of these children she took in.

"This has been the century of strangers, brown, yellow, and white. This has been the century of the great immigrant experiment. It is only this late in the day that you can walk into a playground and find Isaac Leung by the fish pond, Danny Rahman in the football cage, Quang O'Rourke bouncing a basketball, and Irie Jones humming a tune. Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checkups." p 271

After this point it gets hard to follow the Chalfen family. They get confusing and conversations got lost on me. They also change rapidly and we don't get to see it as easily as we do for those we are actually following through the story, so it's more like forgotten characters reinvented than progression through time with them... but the father does lab experiments with mice... and that is /very/ hard for me to read, so I won't quote it much except for this...

"One mouse sacrificed for 5.3 billion humans. Hardly mouse apocalypse. Not too much to ask." p 283

I hated that whole section, I hate when the father comes in... yes, it's written well whenever it comes up in the book, yes there are times when it explains why experiments on genetics are important, yes, I know it's happening all the time in the world, but I hate it. It just breaks my heart because I take it all in on myself... It's a hard thing to do.

Now in Jamaica with Irie's family history...

"When an Englishman wants to be generous, the firstthing you ask is why, because there is always a reason." p 296

10mirrani
Jan 26, 2012, 7:12 pm

And now into the pages of 300s... Though maybe I should have broken down things at the break into Irie's history...

Here's a quote that I was very glad to finally get to..
"Irie switched Joyce off. IT was quite therapeutic, switching Joyce off." p332

Accents are written very well in this book too. I didn't mark this quote for accent alone, but it shows what I mean. Here we have Irie's grandmother talking..
"'Everybody always tryin' to heducate you; heducate you about dis, heducate you about dat . . . Dat's always bin de problem wid the women in dis family. Somebody always tryin' to heducate them about someting, pretendin' it all about learnin' when it all about a battle of de wills.'" p338

Now back to the damned family again... The father this time... dealing with being out in the world and not a very social person.
"In the outside world, outside of his college and home, one had to add things to speech. Particularly if one was somewhat strange-looking, as Marcus gathered he was; if one was a little old, with eccentric curly hair and spectacles missing their lower rims. You had to add things to your speech to make it more palatable. Niceties, throwaway phrases, pleases and thank you." p 344

"As far as Marcus could see, science and science fiction were like ships in the night, passing each other in the fog. A science fiction robot, for example--even his son Oscar's expectation of a robot-- was a thousand years ahead of anything either robotics or artificial intelligence could yet achieve. While the robots in Oscar's mind were singing, dancing and empathizing with his every joy and fear, over at MIT some poor bastard was slowly and painstakingly trying to get a machine to re-create the movements of a single human thumb." p345
-This puts it all in perspective, doesn't it? Guess Star Trek doesn't "live." :p

"And because the public were three steps ahead of him, like Oscar's robot, they had already played out their endgames, already concluded what the result of his research would be--something he did not presume to imagine!--full of their clones, zombies, designer children, gay genes."p347

And the logic of an Englishman at an airport picking up the son of the family from Bangladesh, who is now returning from there, and recognizing said Englishman, who he has corresponded with for a while now...
"'Yes! Magid! We finally meet! I feel as if I know you already--well, I do, but then again I don't--but, bloody hell, how did you know it was me?'

Magid's face grew radiant and revealed a lopsided smile of much angelic charm. 'Well, Marcus, my dear man, you are the only white fellow at gate 32.'" p350

"But you couldn't upset Magid with words. He turned the other cheek. Sometimes hundreds of times a day, like a lollipop lady on Ecstasy." p354

"Reporters were factional, fanatical, obsessively defending their own turf, propounding the same thing day after day. So it had always been. Who would have guessed that Luke and John would take such different angles on the scoop of the century, the death of the Lord? It just went to prove that you couldn't trust these guys." p355

Another example of Joyce, who just grates on my nerves something horrible.
"'Because Marjorie's right, and it is ADHD, he really needs to get to a doctor and som emethylphenidate. It's a very debilitative condition.'

'Joyce, he hasn't got a disorder, he's just a Muslim. There are one billion of them. They can't all have ADHD.'" p358

11mirrani
Jan 27, 2012, 9:03 pm

I've just finished this one and I won't give up the ending but, wow... talk about bringing a work together. I know it talks in the end about not mentioning conclusions because lives don't have them (which I thought was great to say) but it really /was/ its own conclusion that way.

So, no notes from the last pages at all, but here is what struck me before the end was near:

"Sometimes, here in England, especially at bus stops and on the daytime soaps, you heard people say 'We're involved with each other,' as if this were a most wonderful state to be in, as if one chose it and enjoyed it. Alsna never thought of it that way, Involved is what befell the moon-faced Alsna Begum and the handsome Samad Miah one week after they'd been pushed into a Delhi breakfast room together and informed they were to marry. Involved was the result when Clara Bowden met Archie Jones at the bottom of some stairs. Involved swallowed up a girl called Ambrosia and a boy called Charlie (yes, Clara had told her that sorry tale) the second they kissed in the pantry of a guest house. Involved is neither good nor bad. It is just a consequence of living, a consequence of occupation and immigration, of empires and expansion, of living in each others pockets . . . one becomes involved and it is a long trek back to being uninvolved." p363

"What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a cibatta roll--then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greetings cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time." p381-382

"But the world happens to you, thought Joshua, you don't happen to the world." p412

Talking of why the statues in Trafalgar Square were all facing Big Ben:
"'Now, will somebody please tell me: what is it about the English that makes them build their statues with their backs to their culture and their eyes on the time?'"
(The answer was "'Because they look to their future to forget their past.'") p417

"And it may be absurd to us that one Iqbal can believe the breadcrumbs laid down by another Iqbal, generations before him, have not yet blown away in the breeze. But it really doesn't matter what we believe. It seems it wont' stop the man who thinks this life is guided by the life he thinks he had before or the gypsy who swears by the queens in her tarot pack. And it's hard to change the mind of the high-strung woman who lays responsibility for all her actions at the feet of her mother, or the lonely guy who sit in a folding chair on a hill in the dead of night waiting for the little green men." p419

And as a final conclusion, I love the way Joyce gets yelled at by others in the end... I felt huge relief as people stood up to her junk... and I was constantly amazed at how history is described in a room... such as in page 383, when the twins are using the room's furniture to explain away their feelings, chairs, tables, chalkboard.. "The brothers begin to argue. It escalates in moments, and they make a mockery of that idea, a neutral place; instead they cover the room with history--past, present, and future history (for there is such a thing)-- they take what was blank and smear it with the stinking shit of the past like excitable, excremental children. They cover this neutral room in themselves." It's just so very well done... The idea used a few times in the book, but I don't think it's overused because it's just well done.

Finally... my review is here:
http://www.librarything.com/review/41390220
Though I think anyone reading knows how I feel about having read this. :)

12cedargrove
Jan 30, 2012, 6:35 am

I love the descriptions of the hair salon that you've quoted. The language used really conjures up the difference in the mentality between the way women view 'getting their hair done' and the way men see that everyday activity. In your quoting it's part of what I've come to like about the way this author writes... and like always you pick out some of the best quotes.

You've very thorough too - I would never have thought of checking to see if the kind of flower the woman was growing was real or 'imagined.' But oh so true the consideration about cloning - funning how my mind turns to SF like Star Trek and SGA when this kinds of matters come up, in spite of the fact that modern science is moving toward the capacity of cloning and reproducing that way too.

Your quote from page 271 disturbed me... made me think of the interrment camps that Mr Takei was talking about one year at Vegas - so wrong for the immigrants, but of course it doesn't stop there, because for the indiginous people too there were such indignities - enforced sterilisation and all those kinds of thing. All of these things started going through my mind when I read that quote, so even when you haven't read the whole book, it's still very thought provoking. I still think I want to read the whole book though.

I understand, and am entirely with you on the whole mouse thing, btw - any animal experimentation is bad... bad enough, but of course mice being only a step away from ratties, kinda, makes the thought even worse. I miss the babies.

The quote you end with on that particular section, from page 296 (ends "...there is always a reason." is a powerful one... I mean it could be seen to be very cliched in some ways, but the writing of this book seems too good for that, so instead, knowing from all the wonderful quotes you've made, just how well written it is instead, it gave me a shiver of 'what is all that about' down my spine.

13cedargrove
Jan 30, 2012, 6:43 am

It's great that you address the topic of accents used in the book - and I'm glad they are so well written. Things like that are always hit and miss - some authors manage it, some authors don't. And you're right. With the example you quoted, the grandmother is certainly well written.

The robot quote - loved it! And yes, while I was reading the quote I was certainly thinking about Data! Does certainly put Star Trek into perspective. So far to go in some respects.

Prejudice, (and non-prejudice) And expectations of people from other cultures hits rather close just now, but oh, those quotes did make me laugh, especially the last one!

14cedargrove
Jan 30, 2012, 6:49 am

Okay! So now I definitely want to read this book!

I'm curious - I mean I love the quote from page 363, but I wondered what was it that made you quote that section (which I thought was so true, btw)...?

"But the world happens to you, thought Joshua, you don't happen to the world." p412

Wow... that's hit hard today, I mean any day, it's such a powerful thing for a character (or person) to be thinking. Mind spirals off into wondering what has happened to Joshua to make him feel that way?

After all you've said about Joyce, and all the quotes you made of things she's said, I couldn't help but feel your relief when you talk about her getting yelled at by the others. I'm glad you had some kind of closure on that. Awesome!

15mirrani
Jan 30, 2012, 6:17 pm

I looked up the flower because it was described in such a way that I thought it was beautiful and I wanted it for my own garden... which of course I can't have because it doesn't exist... pictures came close, but not the same thing...

I quoted 363 because it moved me, it touched me... the thought of "involved" and what it means to be "involved" just spoke to me for some reason. Funny how language can be thrown out at random and ignored for what it is or used for something deep and thoughtful, which this is.

16cedargrove
Jan 30, 2012, 6:25 pm

That's one of the reasons that I love language.