SOURCE: Soar, Daniel. “Willesden Fast-Forward.” London Review of Books 22, no. 18 (21 September 2000): 30–31.

In the following review, Soar offers a mixed assessment of White Teeth.

A woman at the counter of the newsagent I was in was charged £25. I looked over to see what she could have been buying. Twenty Benson and Hedges, a packet of crisps—and a clutch of lottery tickets. Not cheap. I picture her going into the same shop Saturday after Saturday, buying more and more tickets each time. At first it was just one: then it was two, four the week after, six the next—until it was twenty, and her chances of winning were multiplied twenty times. The trick with gambling is this: each time you lose, you raise the stake you put in so that when you win you cover all your losses. There's a catch: to be sure of winning you need...