It follows, for a while, the lives of three poor North London families over several decades of the late 20th Century- the Chalfens, Joneses, and the Iqbals, except that it does not really follow them. There is no coherent thread, just a lot of scenes designed to show us how weird, funny, grotesque, or dull these people of Indian, Jamaican, and Turkish backgrounds are. A few negative reviews have pointed out that Smith, despite her background, has no real grasp of slang- especially that of the Jamaican immigrants the Joneses represent, as she supposedly mixes Jamaican and Rastafarian terms with ease. I have no idea whether this is true or not, but the characters are all stereotypes, and speak in atrocious dialogues, whether or not the patois is correct. To nitpick over the patois when the writing is atrocious is like complaining the rabid dog that bit you also looked flea-bitten.

Conversation is best when it gives the illusion of colloquialism while focusing on the most poetic moments of speech to arrive at illuminating points that a reader can relate to. Conversation, when well used, can be a shortcut o establishing a character's traits and habits, far more easily and quickly than omniscient narration can. Smith has no idea that this is what it can be used for. Instead, she sees it as a way to show hipsterism is alive and well, and she's an initiate of it. The two ostensible leads are Archie Jones- an inveterate liar and Samad Iqbal, a career waiter. They are buddies from World War Two, and the patriarchs of their clans. Archie marries beautiful, but buck-toothed Clara, who hates her Jehovah's Witness mother, thus slipping into an unsavory lifestyle in rebellion. They have a daughter, named Irie. Samad marries a girl named Alsana and has twin boys, Magid and Millat- the former a Fundy Islamist, and the latter a wannabe street thug. Both men are disappointed in life, and an inordinate portion of the book takes place in a dentist's office- hence the title, which also is slang to mean the ideal of a handsome English boy or girl the social climbing foreigners see as ideal mates.

Of course, the children cannot assimilate, and Irie fixates on Millat. Then, nothing much more happens, as the older generations' struggles give way to the younger, including Moslem cultists, genetic experiments on mice, the protests against Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (a cheap way to wrangle a blurb from him- which worked!, as his is the first on the book's blurb page) the Chalfen family, and then the book just ends- as if Smith grew bored with the whole damnable enterprise, and thought she'd just pull the plug. Of course, this end comes only after a hundred and fifty or so pages of a book that seems to want to veer into science fiction before dropping back to failed social satire, and after many other narratives and themes are dropped without reason- admittedly, none were that interesting to begin with, but why start a bad thread if you will not even end it? The book is full of such technical failings, and cannot even qualify as a slice of life tale, in the mold of a lesser A Tree Grows In Brooklyn or the Bridge novels of Evan S. Connell, for it seemingly wants to go somewhere, only to pull back, and just wither.

Was macht nun diesen Roman aus dem multiethnischen Milieu Londons so bedeutend, dass kaum mehr jemand wagt, auch auf die Schwächen hinzuweisen und sein Übermaß an Figuren und vor allem das versöhnliche Ende zu kritisieren? Der Roman ist vielleicht tatsächlich, wie Zadie Smith selbst sagt, das "literarische Äquivalent eines hyperaktiven, zehn Jahre alten, steptanzenden rothaarigen Kindes" und damit in erster Linie außergewöhnlich. Seine Dialoge sind von einer Vitalität, dass man glaubt, man säße auf dem Oberdeck eines dieser roten Busse. Man genießt die scharfsichtige Analyse auch der unbedeutenden Nebensächlichkeiten und folgt den sich oft verlierenden mäandernden Gedanken, weil Zadie Smith mit Worten umzugehen weiß. Selbst dann, wenn sie philosophische Ideen des Daseins auf "Analogien für den Duracell-Hasen" reduziert, sind Witz, Sentimentalität und eine Form des magischen Realismus eben gerade so wohldosiert, dass es keine Haken gibt, die den Lesefluss behindern.