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Title: Very good read, but some character concerns
Review: First off, I've read this book 2X and have enjoyed it both times, however, on the 2nd time through, I couldn't shake the fact that the only white family in the book are overly-intellectual, bigoted, sappy, smarmy love-themselvers. And thoroughly unrealistic. The novel ,which up to the introduction of the Chalfens was rich and realistic and very, very funny, took a downward turn that it barely recovered from due to the ridiculousness of the Chalfen-clan. I am obviously recommending this book, and Zadie Smith IS an extraordinary writer, but I feel that in order to demonstrate one of the book's main purposes of alienation and the search/struggle for a personal and national identity, she unnecessarily, perhaps inadvertantly, streamlined middle-class whites into a forged stereotype. Which is a shame, as the rest of the novel is quite textured and even at times intimate.
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