https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/jul/14/white-teeth-2000-how-does-it-read-now-zadie-smith

Zadie Smith’s debut heartened many readers when it first appeared with its breezily multicultural story. It seems a more complicated tale in 2020

Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, the back of my copy explains, is about “the tricky way the past has of coming back and biting you on the ankle”. A statement made all the more interesting in the 20 years since it came out; a book obsessed with the past, which has itself become a thing of the past.

And plenty of White Teeth reads like a tour through a museum of life in the 1980s, led by a guide who is consistently delighted by Austin Mini Metros, the “atrocious wallpaper” that once adorned curry houses, and the Tomytronic - “a basic computer game that looked like a large pair of binoculars”. Characters sing Buffalo Soldier or Thriller; one boy has a passion for a “noisy TV show about an A team”, while another is in juvenile court for “swiping fucking VW medallions”. (Pedants will be pleased to hear that this is a rare anachronism, since the swiping takes place in 1984, a good two years before such thefts actually became a thing.)