Finished: White Teeth (Smith) I'd heard a lot about this book, but I have to say I was underwhelmed. It was a thought-provoking book tackling family, race, politics, religion and more. I just couldn't ever click with any of the characters, and frankly didn't find many of them likable. Maybe that's the way it is with many books, but at this busy time while I kept picking up this book and putting it down while we were in the last month of wedding planning, I just couldn't seem to connect. I did find myself more interested at the suspense at the very end, but it was too little too late. I'm not sure I have the desire to recap the whole thing in my own words, so I'm going to cheat and just include a blurb from Amazon about the book:

"...the book's home base is a scrubby North London borough, where we encounter Smith's unlikely heroes: prevaricating Archie Jones and intemperate Samad Iqbal, who served together in the so-called Buggered Battalion during World War II. In the ensuing decades, both have gone forth and multiplied: Archie marries beautiful, bucktoothed Clara--who's on the run from her Jehovah's Witness mother--and fathers a daughter. Samad marries stroppy Alsana, who gives birth to twin sons."

Archie's daughter, Irie, and Samad's sons, Magid and Millat, are the focus of most of the book as we watch them age into their late teens and grow in completely different directions...especially the boys, when Samad decides that at least one of his sons must grow up back in their home country instead of England. When they are only ten he separates them by sending his favorite, and the smartest and most selfless of his sons, Magid, back to be schooled in India. Meanwhile, the shallower Millat continues to be influenced by television and other "evil" western influences and becomes part of a bullying gang, before turning to become a member of an extremist Muslim group. Irie seems to be the only character who grows in any way by the end of the book. The indecisive Archie becomes an unwitting hero at the end of the book, and the fates of each character are wrapped up in a last single paragraph a bit too quickly after a very wordy, drawn out previous story. Eh, wish I'd liked it more!