Smith has stories to tell and, in the tradition of Peter Carey and Salman Rushdie, she just gets on with them the dialogue is pitch-perfect, the comedy neat and underplayed.'ĭenes had a half-hearted quibble: 'There is a false climax that attempts to unite far too many characters and storylines: here Smith is only spelling out themes - about family and belonging and history - already implicit in the narrative. Her novel has energy, pace, humour and fully formed characters it is blissfully free of the introversion and self-conscious detail that mar many first novels. 'But it would not matter if she were a he, white and the wrong side of 40: Smith can write. 'Hamish Hamilton's publicists have made much of the fact that Smith is herself part of this entrepreneurial, multicultural Britain - she is young, she is half-Jamaican and she wrote the novel in quiet moments while revising for finals at Cambridge,' wrote Melissa Denes in the Daily Telegraph. 'For once', said the usually testy Hugo Barnacle in the Sunday Times, 'here is a Big New Literary Find that hasn't been oversold.' Smith, a 24-year-old just out of Cambridge, had been given a £250,000 advance and hailed as 'the new Salman Rushdie' by her publisher.

Her debut novel, White Teeth (Hamish Hamilton, £12.99) has received an astonishing chorus of praise.

Z adie Smith appears to be keeping her feet on the ground - and in earthy Willesden too - but heaven knows how.

Zadie smith white teeth 2000