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Oct 06, 2007

Audrey rated it:

I'm beginning to think the problem isn't the books, but me. I was really, really primed to like this book. Not only had one friend spoken favorably of it, another had seen to it that the book was carried all the way from Malawi, Africa to New York and then sent to me.

I am embarrassed to report I had a hard time even finishing it. My primary complaint is contrivances. The dialogue was unnatural to me...and the plot, my goodness. It was hard enough to believe in such a deep academic f More...

7 comments like (21 people liked it)

Jan 25, 2010

Choupette rated it:

Zadie Smith's book On Beauty is about two families on opposing sides of the culture war: The atheist, liberal Belseys on one side and the ultra-religious, ultra-conservative Kipps' on the other. It's also about race and racial identity: black versus white and the influx of poor Haitian immigrants into Boston. It's about Howard Belsey's affair with an old friend of the family and his wife Kiki's attempts to deal with it. It's about Kiki's developing friendship with Carlene Kipps, the wife of her More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 05, 2011

Shovelmonkey1 rated it:

When I first started reading this book I immediately started comparing it to White Teeth and my first thoughts were that I wouldn't enjoy this book as much. Turns out I was wrong about that! I found this story very absorbing and really grew to enjoy the characters and their individual views of life in Wellington. I particularly liked the character of Kiki for she, above all others in this book seemed genuinely at one with herself. The teenagers, Jerome, Zora and Levi all face their own struggles More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 30, 2010

Sally rated it:

I think On Beauty is brilliant. I loved the extra layer of meaning that my reading of E.M. Forster's Howards End provided -- but I don't think it's necessary to do background reading to enjoy this novel. The characters are "messy," as Zadie Smith would say -- most of them make a lot of mistakes, but, for the most part, you love them, or sympathize with them for all of their deficiencies. It's a book with many layers, which is just the kind of fiction I love the most!

Zadie S More...

4 comments like (7 people liked it)

May 07, 2008

Emma rated it:

I would probably give this book three and a half stars, which is not an option here. I thought it was well-written and had many interesting, memorable scenes, but the book did not really feel like a cohesive whole. The story follows an interracial family in an academic setting. The father is a white art history professor at a private liberal arts college in a fictional suburb of Boston; his wife is a black southern woman and they have three kids.
The title "On Beauty" comes fr More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Nov 02, 2007

Addie rated it:

just as my idealized fantasies about academic life were getting a little out of control, the characters in this book come along to make me realize academics can be just as gross as lawyers at times. i also realize i have never read a book about a professor-family before.

in the middle of the book, i told someone that i didn't like any of the characters (except for levi, who is amazing), yet i liked the book - which speaks well for the author. by the end, i liked the characters more. More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Mar 20, 2011

MJ rated it:

This is a book full of unbeautiful people: obnoxious teenagers, philandering academics, stuffy professors, right-on street rappers, wispy rich kids and more obnoxious teenagers. Zadie takes a scalpel to Anglo-American academic relations, probing away at the race/class issues with her usual mordant unflinching cruelty and compassion. She plants a series of depth charges in the lives of her wibbling characters, watching them each explode in turn into quivering heaps of gloopy suet. As ever, More...

16 comments like (8 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Jennifer rated it:

While I did not absolutely hate this book, I really disliked it from the beginning and kept reading in hopes it would redeem itself. Alas, it did not. In fact, there really isn't many redeeming qualities in the story or the characters whatsoever. The book was written with some style, but as far as the storyline and the characters go, the book should have been called On Destruction...which is, as it seems to me to be, where every character was bent on going in their own oblivion. I did not have a More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

May 26, 2008

Alys rated it:

Deliciously brutal take on how class, race and gender are actually dealt with in the society of academia. Excellent stuff if you're into that sort of thing. At any rate, Smith again makes good on her gift for making the reader feel tenderly towards her reliably flawed protagonists.

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 28, 2008

Kirstie rated it:

(3.5 stars)

I don't often feel this way about books but I felt at an inherent disadvantage reading this as a white girl. The main ideas explored have so much to do with race and racial conflicts in particular. Set primarily in Boston, it concerns a marriage between a white professor and a black woman and their kids who struggle to fit into their world. For example, the younger of the two brothers who wants to talk "street" but is ashamed that he lives in an upper middle c More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 14, 2007

Talia rated it:

Zadie Smith makes a literary comeback with On Beauty, an ode to EM Forster's Howard's End. Like her first novel, White Teeth, Smith examines the complex lives of two families - the Belseys and the Kipps - battling it out in the fictionalized college town of Wellington. Howard Belsey is a liberal Rembrandt scholar who is on the brink of tearing his family apart after having an affair with a fellow professor. His long suffering wife, the lovable Kiki, tries to keep together the sanity of her three More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 27, 2007

Lavande rated it:

Aaargh. I didn't want to like this book. I tried hard not to like it but there is no escaping that fact that as precocious as she is, Zadie Smith is a damn fine writer. It's a family drama but there aren’t omnipotent judgments or proselytizing about the book’s larger issues of race, love, and elitism.
An interracial couple struggles through the middle years of their marriage and the awkward social integration of their mixed children. Smith’s portrayal of a relationship falling apart is noth More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Aug 23, 2007

Diana rated it:

Read "White Teeth" last summer, and was expecting more zippy North London dialect and semi-outrageous, often hilarious characters.

This time, though, most of the novel is set in a Boston suburb, so we get a convincing helping of the American teenager, including the three children of the main character: an "uppity," precocious college student; a soft-spoken, burgeoning conservative Christian; and the youngest, who, despite his solidly middle-class and British herita More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 17, 2007

CJ rated it:

i loved, loved white teeth. i did not like on beauty. i'm afraid zadie smith wasn't able to capture american-speak very well. kiki has southern roots and, at times, she supposedly "went florida" in her speech and mannerism, but this was something smith simply stated rather than demonstrated. i could excuse levi's not entirey successful attempts at urban dialogue given his suburban/academic family background, but not carl's. maybe i'm extra critical b/c, in a past life, i spent som More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 06, 2007

Doogyjim rated it:

Now, I'm one of those people who's a little jealous of Ms Smith's success, believing that she's caught a lot of attention due to her ethnicity, fabulous name and great looks plus she's clearly one smart cookie. From what I've heard her first book was marred by a bad ending and her second was just plain bad. I'll reserve judgement, but this reworking of Howard's End is expansively warm and attuned to nuances of behaviour and psychology. It's her great acheivement to make us sympathise with all of More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Alicia rated it:

I heard so many rave reviews of Zadie Smith. But all were recommendations for her book White Teeth. I wanted to throw this disappointing book against the wall. The characters were stock and predictable. The liberal art history professor. The self-righteous college student. The woman poet. The “uncle tom” Black academic. The strong Black woman. And so on and so on. None of their actions were surprising. So many characters, so many missed opportunities to illustrate race relations. Needless to say More...

2 comments like (6 people liked it)

Nov 24, 2007

Elizabeth rated it:

On Beauty is a reinterpretation of E.M. Forster's Howard's End, a classic by one of my favorite authors. Smith had a lot to overcome with that background, and, unfortunately, she couldn't do it. On Beauty is a pedestrian book. It makes a few points about race, class, art, and academia - all of which have been made before but she doesn't do any real harm in making them again. But I just don't care that Howard (a man, not a house in Smith's version) has an affair, ruins his life and his marriage, More...

10 comments like (9 people liked it)

Jul 14, 2009

Maria rated it:

It took me a very long time to get into this book. I found it to be annoyingly stereotypical and I boring drivel. I am 3/4 of the way through and it is getting better - I feel like the first 2/3 she was just warming up. The one part of this novel I really enjoyed and was heartfelt was the the scene where Kiki and Carline have tea. I don't mean to be corny but it was so touching to "watch" the process of a friendship forming. I do feel like the dialogue of the novel in general was a bi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 06, 2007

Megan rated it:

Three "signs" led me to this book: It became available on the "3 for 2" shelf at Boarders, my friend mentioned that it was one of the biggest sellers at her book store, and my professor read a very captivating passage from it that related to our class material. I picked it up as a beach read over Spring Break, and I was sorely disappointed with my choice. I struggled through from start to finish, not liking the main character, Howard, or the plot in general. The ending was More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 31, 2011

Franck rated it:

Zadie Smith can sometime be a great author, but I think that On Beauty is by far her weakest effort. The characters are despicable one-dimensional clichés and the writer likes to explain their simplistic thoughts and pulsions forever and ever. There's a handful of good moments, but it's definitely not on level with her previous two books. Disappointing.

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 23, 2010

Ken-ichi rated it:

I recall it was good, humorous, but I found it difficult to forget the author is a half-black British academic writing about an African American experience. I found all the University faculty and students and their various escapades and entanglements believable, both because I have lived in that world and based on what I knew about the author, but when the book delved into issues of being black in America rather than being black in academia, it felt a bit clunky. But then again, I'm not black, s More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 03, 2008

Steph rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

May 27, 2010

Akiva added it

On Beauty is, according to the author, an homage to Howards End and I made a point of reading that before this. I'm not sure it was a good idea. Not that one was necessarily better than the other, but the contrast placed On Beauty's flaws in relief. Howards End was carefully put together and tightly plotted. I didn't get that impression from On Beauty. It's momentum exhausted, it just sort of stopped. All the characters are so wrapped up in their own neuroses that you feel them more as caricatur More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 23, 2009

Michael rated it:

After reading Howard's End, I wanted to go back and reread On Beauty to see if knowledge of the former would help me enjoy the latter. Short version: yes it did.

There's a lot to like about On Beauty. Zadie Smith's prose is a pleasure to read. Her descriptions of fall in the Boston suburbs jibe with my memories, and make me nostalgic. The real strength of the book is in the characters: Kiki and her kids provide the most pleasure. For all the talk about class, race, education, etc., Sm More...

0 comments like

Mar 18, 2009

Sasha rated it:

I picked this one up at the airport because I had heard of it and because (well, partially) the back cover said something about 'real beauty.' So in the hope that it might say things like 'it's ok to put on weight because even a fat person can be beautiful,' I started reading it.

The book surprised me. It explores the differences between two families: The Belseys and the Kippses. Howard Belsey and Monty Kipps are as different as can be. One is a left wing atheist who believes in affir More...

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Mar 12, 2009

Marianna rated it:

I vacillated between thinking that Smith portrayed her subjects in a realistic, satisfying manner and somehow feeling like it was all a bit too contrived. It was interesting to read a novel that really tackles race relations on a covert, symbolic level (much like they exist in real life). But it felt like Smith tried to cram too much in. It was a little like Saved by the Bell where you have every high school stereotype represented (the jock, the nerd, the cool kid, the geek), but you realize More...

0 comments like

Mar 01, 2009

Tisa rated it:

To properly rate this book, I need a half-star between "it was ok" and "i liked it". I generally admire writers of-color who endeavor to rewrite "classics" and "greats," so that kept my interest, more structurally than on the level of actual prose style. Smith is no stylist, and, media hype notwithstanding, is no heir of Forster's on that score.

The most enduring, complex, memorable characters, for me, are the wives of the feuding husbands. More...

0 comments like

Dec 27, 2011

Elaine rated it:

Okay, did anyone else notice how many fat people are in her book? Kiki's fat. Bus driver is fat. Two tenured colleagues of Howard's, fat. Zora's fat. And so on. And it's not just that they are fat, but specific attention is called to their fatness. It is discussed and described and made special note of, as if it was the primary quality with which to describe these characters. I just kept noticing how fatness seemed to be this background theme of the book, and not in a great connotation either. I More...

0 comments like

Nov 27, 2011

Bookreaderljh rated it:

It took me a little while to get into this book's stories but once I did I really liked it quite a bit. There are a number of characters and all of them are treated with importance and clarity no matter whether they are a minor or major character. The main focus of the story is on one (maybe two?) families and the relationships inherent in family and friends/coworkers in a small college town. One of the characters is researching rap music and how "crossroads" play a role throughout. An More...

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Nov 06, 2011

Haley rated it:

"Write what you know" is a well worn cliché, but the best writing in this book deals with topics close to the author's experience. I found the perspectives on race in a racially and culturally mixed household interesting, and felt they were handled with the loving care of one who knows this experience intimately. Many descriptions of human interaction also ring true in a powerful way, particularly involving the character of Kiki. But I did not think this book was truly great. While the More...

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