Katie's Picks | midtownreader

Katie Hautamaki

Katie is a Tallahassee native, former magazine editor, and mother of three. Her favorite writers include Marilynne Robinson, Annie Dillard, Joan Didion, Zadie Smith, and many others – while her kids favor Roald Dahl, Ezra Jack Keats, Oliver Jeffers, and Shel Silverstein.

The story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley. Dillard sets out to see what she can see.
Her personal narrative highlights one year's exploration on foot. In the summer, Dillard stalks
muskrats and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She unties a snake skin, witnesses a flood, and plays King of the Meadow with a field of grasshoppers. The result is an exhilarating tale of nature and its seasons.

At the center of this novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. A second marriage to Clara Bowden quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life. Samad's late-in-life arranged marriage produces twins whose separate paths confound Iqbal's every effort to direct them. Set against London's racial and cultural tapestry, White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.