On Beauty

published	August 29th 2006 by Penguin (Non-Classics)
first published	2005
binding	Paperback
isbn	0143037749 (isbn13: 9780143037743)
pages	464
literary awards	Orange Prize for Fiction (2006); 2005 Booker Prize Nominee
description	In an author's note at the end of On Beauty, Zadie Smith writes: "My largest structural debt should be obvious to any E.M. Forster fan; s...more [close] In an author's note at the end of On Beauty, Zadie Smith writes: "My largest structural debt should be obvious to any E.M. Forster fan; suffice it to say he gave me a classy old frame, which I covered with new material as best I could." If it is true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Forster, perched on a cloud somewhere, should be all puffed up with pride. His disciple has taken Howards End, that marvelous tale of class difference, and upped the ante by adding race, politics, and gender. The end result is a story for the 21st century, told with a perfect ear for everything: gangsta street talk; academic posturing, both British and American; down-home black Floridian straight talk; and sassy, profane kids, both black and white. Howard Belsey is a middle-class white liberal Englishman teaching abroad at Wellington, a thinly disguised version of one of the Ivies. He is a Rembrandt scholar who can't finish his book and a recent adulterer whose marriage is now on the slippery slope to disaster. His wife, Kiki, a black Floridian, is a warm, generous, competent wife, mother, and medical worker. Their children are Jerome, disgusted by his father's behavior, Zora, Wellington sophomore firebrand feminist and Levi, eager to be taken for a "homey," complete with baggy pants, hoodies and the ever-present iPod. This family has no secrets--at least not for long. They talk about everything, appropriate to the occasion or not. And, there is plenty to talk about. The other half of the story is that of the Kipps family: Monty, stiff, wealthy ultra-conservative vocal Christian and Rembrandt scholar, whose book has been published. His wife Carlene is always slightly out of focus, and that's the way she wants it. She wafts over all proceedings, never really connecting with anyone. That seems to be endemic in the Kipps household. Son Michael is a bit of a Monty clone and daughter Victoria is not at all what Daddy thinks she is. Indeed, Forster's advice, "Only connect," is lost on this group. The two academics have long been rivals, detesting each other's politics and disagreeing about Rembrandt. They are thrown into further conflict when Jerome leaves Wellington to get away from the discovery of his father's affair, lands on the Kipps' doorstep, falls for Victoria and mistakes what he has going with her for love. Howard makes it worse by trying to fix it. Then, Kipps is granted a visiting professorship at Wellington and the whole family arrives in Massachusetts. From this raw material, Smith has fashioned a superb book, her best to date. She has interwoven class, race, and gender and taken everyone prisoner. Her even-handed renditions of liberal and/or conservative mouthings are insightful, often hilarious, and damning to all. She has a great time exposing everyone's clay feet. This author is a young woman cynical beyond her years, and we are all richer for it. --Valerie Ryan [close]
date added	12-01-06 edit book

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David rated it:

06/03/08

Read in November, 2006

Just like White Teeth years ago, I read every single page of Zadie Smith's On Beauty with both joy and jealousy. Joy because it is one of the best books I've ever read, superbly bouncing the writer's ball of observation and insight against the borders of love and fidelity; race and class; intellectualism and empathy; beauty and power; conservativsim and liberalism; theory and practice. Jealousy because it is precisely the sort of novel I would have liked...more Just like White Teeth years ago, I read every single page of Zadie Smith's On Beauty with both joy and jealousy. Joy because it is one of the best books I've ever read, superbly bouncing the writer's ball of observation and insight against the borders of love and fidelity; race and class; intellectualism and empathy; beauty and power; conservativsim and liberalism; theory and practice. Jealousy because it is precisely the sort of novel I would have liked to one day write myself ... and, because it's so glaringly obvious that - right now - I couldn't. Not like Smith; the believability of her characters and their interactions, her idiosyncratic descriptions, the way she masters dialect without limiting anyone to the way he or she speaks. Most importantly, though, is the frictionless and pleasurable impact of her prose despite - or because of - its crisp, clear, and cliché-free simplicity.

<blockquote>With two bunched fists Kiki thumped the sides of her legs in frustration. 'It's all the same thing, I've been thinking about all of this - it's part of the same ... just veil of doom that's descended on this house - we can't talk about anything seriously, everything's ironic, nothing's serious - everyone's scared to speak in case you think it's clichéd or dull - you're like the thought police. And you don't care about anything, you don't care about us - you know, I was sitting there listening to Kipps - OK, so he's a nutcase half the time, but he's standing up there talking about something he believes in.</blockquote>

Though less than 500 pages, the novel is encyclopedic in its scope. It's not fair to pick only one theme as representative of the novel - what I'm focusing on is much more representative of me. The above quote comes from an argument between Howard - the university intellectual - and his wife Kiki - a hospital administrator, whole and good and self-described as simple. Howard is a liberal relativist; an art history professor; a skeptic of all absolutes. Kiki has been a loving wife for thirty years until discovering her husband's affair with a fellow professor and family friend.

At least a sliver of the novel deals with the egocentric, self-absorbed nature of intellectualism. The gladiator-like ideological battles. The deductive dismissal of morality to excuse obvious moral transgressions. Western, liberal intellectuals have long valued irony and articulate wit over sincerity and good behavior. Cervantes and Oscar Wilde and Voltaire become heroes not because of their contribution to a better, more fair society, but because they have sharp tongues and mischievous one-liners.

They've long been my heroes as well. When logic chides against the foundation of absolute morality, young ambition searches for something other than righteousness. And in our society, it is much more fashionable to be young, clever, witty and worldly than to be simply good. Here is Zora, the over-achieving daughter of Howard and Kiki, talking with her friends about the affair between her father and her poetry professor.

<blockquote> 'Are you serious? She totally can't look me in the eye - even in class, when I'm reading she's nodding at the window.' 
'I think she's just ADD,' drawled Daisy. 
'Attention Dick Deficiency,' said Zora, because she was extremely quick. 'If it doesn't have a dick, it's basically deficient.' 
Her little audience guffawed, pretending to a worldliness none of them had earned. 
Ron gripped her chummily round the shoulders. 'The wages of sin, etcetera,' he said as they began to walk, and then, 'Whither morality?' 
'Wither poetry?' said Hannah. 
'Whither my ass?' said Daisy, and nudged Zora for one of her cigarettes. They were smooth and bright, and their timing was wonderful, and they were young and hilarious. It was really something to see, they thought, and this was why they spoke loudly and gestured, inviting onlookers to admire. 
'Tell me about it,' said Zora, and flicked open the carton. 
And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared. </blockquote>...less

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Leah rated it:

07/06/08

Zadie Smith's 2005 book, On Beauty, is surprisingly light on beauty - hers instead is a world of sometimes cringe-inducing and sometimes awe-inspiring reality. Her talent is finding those strange but common moments of confusing thought and excising them of their mystery, something that she does very well here (though maybe not as stunningly in her debut, White Teeth).

As usual, Smith focuses on characterizations that make her protagonists jump off the page - in this case the saga of two fami...more Zadie Smith's 2005 book, On Beauty, is surprisingly light on beauty - hers instead is a world of sometimes cringe-inducing and sometimes awe-inspiring reality. Her talent is finding those strange but common moments of confusing thought and excising them of their mystery, something that she does very well here (though maybe not as stunningly in her debut, White Teeth).

As usual, Smith focuses on characterizations that make her protagonists jump off the page - in this case the saga of two families whose intertwined lives lead to an unexpected conclusion. On top of all this Smith manages to rope threads around some very serious issues, here covered in brief with the hope that I'm not giving too much away:

Art - the two warring professors, Howard Belsey and Monty Kipps, each have their own ideas of what constitutes great art and, Smith potentially argues, are both quite wrong. These are two men who have are no longer capable of seeing beauty, but rage on stubbornly, and (almost?) blindly.

Politics - Belsey and Kipps also spend a good deal of time arguing liberal (Belsey) versus conservative (Kipps) belief systems, particularly how they should be addressed in a university setting.

Class - This was a tricky one and, like her other two books to date, one of the biggest shadows cast over the book. Various characters explore and struggle with their ideas of what constitutes 'real' living, and these ideas are almost universally wrapped up in class, each one thinking that the other is living a life of superficial falsity for not comprehending and/or taking on the ideals of the other.

Gender - Probably the book that has most directly dealt wit this head-on, Howard Belsey's sometimes wife Kiki at the center of this struggle to assert herself as a woman and a human being, to be seen by her distracted husband as something beyond the flesh (of which it is noted she has quite a bit of - hers is not the body it once was in her youth, and this too brings out issues of identity in even the smallest mentions of her character). With Monty Kipps' wife Carlene, the two women seem to represent the two extreme opposites of their generation.

Race - Kiki is also the black somewhat more privileged wife of a white man, something that the Belsey children deal with often indirectly, with a rendering that is, typical of Smith, very artfully done (Again White Teeth is a great reference for more of this kind of depiction).

Religion - Put simply, some of them have it, and some of them think it's ridiculous. A man who seems to be a representative figure of it turns out to be a fraud, and the man who seems to scoff at it appears to find his own version of it at the end of the novel.

Many praises have been heaped on this novel, and for good reason. Whether she's exposing the bureaucracy of the university system or following the perils of a boy who would rather act like a poor Haitian than a well-off son of a nurse and professor from the suburbs, Smith's depiction of the human race is spot on - except for maybe Jerome Belsey, who starts off the story and seems to disappear for most of it - his is the only characterization that seems to have floundered, an odd exclusion when Smith is known for her skillful portrayal of large casts of characters.

Aside from this omission, probably the only other problem I have with this book is its somewhat one-sided depiction of the university system. Smith does show, seemingly as an aside, one 'real' girl Kate, a grounded, shy and down-to-earth student who seems lost in the university's haughty scholarship, but she seems to be the exception to the rule, which I'm not sure if a very balance portrayal.

(It probably should also be noted that there are some adult situations that do not make this appropriate for persons of a certain age.)

Still, there's genuine moments of hilarity and drama in this novel, mixed in with a satire (that only very occasionally sounds like lecturing), and an exploration of class and privilege that make it well worth the read.
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Emma rated it:

05/07/08

Read in May, 2008

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 from a...more 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 from a poem, which is quoted at one point during the book. The book did comment on different types and perceptions of beauty as well as different kinds of intelligence and intellectual styles. These themes are conveyed through the novel's many characters. For example, there is the wife, Kiki Belsey, a large black woman with beautiful skin who radiates with a goddess-like presence, who notes that people expect this like her as a black woman of her size. She is not in the academic world, but is perhaps the most emotionally intelligent character. Her husband Howard is an average-looking white middle-aged man, who struggles with finishing and publishing his academic scholarship and whose style tends to dispute common understandings about the art world. (His main thesis is that Rembrant wasn't really anything special, he was just painting to fulfill the requests of the clients who commissioned him.) Another professor, Claire Malcom, is a petite, thin white woman who wears no make-up and might seem not to care about her appearance, though it is revealed that she has been ordering salads almost her entire life, practices yoga in order to stay young and flexible, and pays careful attention to her bikini line. Claire is a poet and is somewhat looked down upon within her department for not being a "real" academic. Howard and Kiki's daughter Zora tries too hard in both respects. She spends considerable time getting ready in the morning and pledges at the beginning of the semester to swim everyday and lose weight. She also works inredibly hard in her classes (she is a sophomore at the fictional college, Wellington), but does not seem to have any real opinions of her own. What she lacks in natural beauty or talent, she makes up for with hard work and persistence.
Similar analysis can be made for almost every character, some we barely meet at all. For instance, in the course of three pages we are introduced to a college freshman who was the academic star in her high school who is terrified to open her mouth in Howard's class for fear of saying something stupid. As quickly as she is introduced, she is gone, never to be mentioned again. This breadth of characters provides these various human idiosyncrasies, but in some ways damages the story as a whole, never letting us get to know one character or storyline in depth. ...less

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Callista rated it:

06/19/08

I don't know what it was, but this book didn't live up to my expectations. I had heard a lot of good things about this book, and decided to pick it up after coming across it in the library, but it just fell short. It wasn't a bad book by any means—something just didn't click right with me. For the first two hundred fifty pages, I was just reading it to have something to do, practically, but the last half of the book was the only bit that really caught my interest.

I'm not really sure why I ...more I don't know what it was, but this book didn't live up to my expectations. I had heard a lot of good things about this book, and decided to pick it up after coming across it in the library, but it just fell short. It wasn't a bad book by any means—something just didn't click right with me. For the first two hundred fifty pages, I was just reading it to have something to do, practically, but the last half of the book was the only bit that really caught my interest.

I'm not really sure why I didn't like it, though. I really enjoyed the writing style, I enjoyed the characterization, the plot was complex, and pretty much everything I wanted in a book, but it just... fell short. It didn't give me the... closeness and the relation I wanted with a book. With most books, I can relate to most of the situations and the characters, but with On Beauty, I just couldn't do it the way I wanted to. I could relate to some things, but a very slim few. I found that surprising, because the Kipps family is conservative Christian as mine is, but it fell short of my expectations.

Of course, that's not to say other people won't enjoy it, because it was well-written. In fact, one of the redeeming factors of the book was the way Zadie Smith wrote it. I really enjoyed the fact that it wasn't written in that straight-forward way most books are written in. Even though some of the paragraphs were one or two pages long, that aspect seemed to add more to the story, not distract from it. Zadie Smith's style of writing was, I admit, the main reason why I kept reading through more than two hundred fifty pages without dropping it (like I was sort of tempted to do).

Another thing I liked was the clash of families—that was one thing I could relate to. Since I'm from a conservative family and at the same time from a place that's rapidly becoming more and more liberal, I could relate to the Kipps struggle, partly that of Monty. I didn't necessarily approve of what I heard he did at the end of the story, and it bothered me that no one really thought it "odd" or not right—the father of the Belsey family did the same thing, with Monty's daughter, no less, and he got all the slack. Obviously that's a good thing, but it seemed like what Monty did didn't play as big a role in the story. Disregarding that, I felt the clash between white vs. black, conservative versus liberal, and other things was very much like regular life.

For that reason, I felt that it was realistic, if nothing else. My expectations fell short and I was expecting a bit more from the story, so that's why it only earned a C+ grade. However, like I said, I've heard a lot of good things about the book, so I'd still recommend it to people reading this—a few people on my friends list may enjoy it, even though I didn't....less

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Kirstie rated it:

01/28/08

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: people interested in: race and youth in America, politics, universities

(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 class are...more (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 class area of Boston. The idea is to not be privileged and when he runs into some Haitians, he's even more convinced that he shouldn't be living in his current rich neighborhood. There are questions of beauty too, as the subject suggests both in terms of the wife and mother of the family and a work of Rembrandt's (I've always hated that artist, I have to admit, which made it much more difficult for me to enjoy the book in some sections.)

Besides delving into the politics of Haiti, the book also speaks about affirmative action with two angry professors. The one who opposes the other speaking out on affirmative action doesn't want to tread on democracy but he's torn to say the least. Both arguments-for and against affirmative action are stated and perhaps the most powerful is the one in which suggests that issues of class became more important to politicians like Condi than their race.

You also have alot of immorality from both sides-the Christian right wing and the completely liberal. Affairs abound and it seems poorly written at this point...too stereotypical and uncreative. Predictable. Really, the only person who is without artifice and could be described as beautiful is the professor's wife and the mother of the story who is a feminist to her core even if she's not an intellectual. Despite her weight, she's a rather proud woman who cherishes her children and is forgiving as possible about many things.

Without giving away too much, the book also doesn't really leave you with a definitive ending. Though it's clever the way she it finishes, I felt overall a little disappointed even though it vaguely reminds me of The Crying of Lot 49 in terms of that anticipation. But then again, as I said before I really couldn't care less about Rembrandt. Overall, I was more impressed wth The Autograph Man...still have to finish White Teeth. ...less

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Nate rated it:

04/26/07

Read in June, 2006

Now that I've had a week to think about what was said at the book group about this book, I feel like I've clarified some things. I think the book had some interesting things to say about how intellectuals and non-intellectuals view the world. Smith can definitely see benefits to both sides, but she tended to skew the intellectuals toward the Major Fuck Up category. And she also tended to use the physically beautiful characters in this book as guinea pigs of behavior. Some of the pretty ones had ...more Now that I've had a week to think about what was said at the book group about this book, I feel like I've clarified some things. I think the book had some interesting things to say about how intellectuals and non-intellectuals view the world. Smith can definitely see benefits to both sides, but she tended to skew the intellectuals toward the Major Fuck Up category. And she also tended to use the physically beautiful characters in this book as guinea pigs of behavior. Some of the pretty ones had good heads on their shoulders and had foresight and some were using their beauty as manipulation to get what they thought they wanted, but it seemed all of the character's motives revolved around the beautiful people. Smith seemed to have an appreciation for the people who live day to day, who take life as it comes and not to over-think and muddle through issues.

The book had incredible characters, but if you've read Smith before you probably were expecting to meet people like Kiki, Vee & Carl. I was disappointed in how she used Monty Kipps as a stereotypical evil republican henchman, ruler of his domain, inflexible & iron-fisted. He could have been more developed, especially as he relates to his wife, and not this symbol of intellectual conservatism. We saw his strong opinions but not what was backing up all of these ideas. I did like discovering how more and more the author found similarities between the two families mother and father-heads, even though their backgrounds were quite varied.

She also got the differing views of each character through the eyes of other character's perspective dead on. It was amazing how she framed each of the Belsey's opinions of Howard. And even pulled in a student's views from the first person POV (several pages in the book that I reeled from at first because it just didn't seem to fit) to give the reader a sense of Howard's complete denial of anything beautiful for beauty's sake. It was such an epiphany sitting in the book group and having the group think through how important that interaction is to Smith's point, another big theme in the group: significance of the title. Howard pinned between a struggling student with similar views as himself wanting his attention and the beautiful Vee walking by and smiling; interesting which person he picks to talk to and which he chooses to blow off.

Perfect book for a book group. Great book just to read. Zadie Smith is one of my faves.

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Joel rated it:

05/31/07

bookshelves: booksiwroteabout

Read in December, 2005

Here's what I wrote about On Beauty in the Honolulu Weekly:

Poor Zadie Smith published White Teeth at an absurdly young age to massive critical acclaim. Her second novel, The Autograph Man, bombed like Frank DeLima at a Hawaiian Studies faculty dinner. White Teeth was an incredibly intricate tale of three families in North London, colliding with each other in an explosion of cultural, racial and religious confetti that exemplified Britain’s imperial past and neo-imperial present. The...more

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Yanchovy rated it:

12/20/07

Read in December, 2007

recommends it for: the Dave Eggers, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Lethem crowd.

I liked this book. Having read several of the reviews for this book, I have to say that I agree with parts of each review that I read. Those who did not like the book often cited a lack of authenticity in the American "slang" speech patterns, and I'd have to agree that there was some unnaturalness to the vernacular in the book. However, I found myself interested enough in the themes and characters of the book to overlook the slight inaccuracies of speech patterns.

I should say, how...more I liked this book. Having read several of the reviews for this book, I have to say that I agree with parts of each review that I read. Those who did not like the book often cited a lack of authenticity in the American "slang" speech patterns, and I'd have to agree that there was some unnaturalness to the vernacular in the book. However, I found myself interested enough in the themes and characters of the book to overlook the slight inaccuracies of speech patterns.

I should say, however, I am predisposed to liking this book to begin with, as I am extremely interested in the themes of beauty and cheating, and the motivations associated with each. The novel does a good job of exploring these themes, and I found Howard Belsey's actions especially interesting, and somewhat enlightening, though certainly not the end-all explanation for motivations for adultery, but more like an interesting glimpse into one man's...urges.

The academic setting is something that I am also predisposed to as well, being familiar with academia. I am, therefore, very aware of the fact that intellectuals and academics are much, much more like messy, real people than some might think, and that academia is full of politics, gossip, and immoral behavior. This fully realized account from Zadie Smith is, at times, startlingly accurate and insightful, and I often had pangs of recognition -- sometimes painful, sometimes joyful -- from her descriptions, her character's actions, and the implications of things done and said in the book.

Bottom line, a thoroughly engaging book that is full of charm and wit -- a surprisingly warm wit, rather than an acerbic one. Smith is a great observer of human behavior, a rather good writer, and she weaves a very interesting story, especially if the book's themes and setting happen to be perfectly tailored to your areas of interest! I wouldn't say that this is one of the "Great Books" that will be canonized or anything, but it is a great book to read if you'd like to be engaged, engrossed, and even a little bit enlightened. ...less

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CJ rated it:

08/17/07

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 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 some time in the spoken word scene, but carl was a shell of an idea rather than an authentic, believable character. whatisname's assistant, the other southerner, really showed some of smith's weakness in writing regional/cultural dialects. one "accented" word in a character's sentence - e.g. "pahpoint" - w/o keen attention to how other more common words should be spoken does not make for very convincing dialogue.

i was so distracted by the characters' inauthentic language that i didn't have the patience/interest to hone in on the themes about beauty...which seemed a bit shallow anyhow. ok, the fat character is sympathetic and fun and smart and good-looking despite her rolls...the thin beautiful character is too often taken merely at face value and people don't make much of an effort to get to know her beyond that...but the reader can't get to know her beyond that b/c smith also isn't interested in her other than for her looks.

the good stuff: the father felt genuine and gave an honest look at academic/intellectual pursuits when stagnant. his thoughts about his family and marriage also felt real and were interesting to me, especially b/c...well b/c i'm not a man and he seemed to offer a real "man's" (albeit an older man's) point of view. i thought his musings on his relationship w/ kiki were more thoroughly drawn out than kiki's, interesting since smith is herself a woman. kudos to her for being able to represent the husband so well. (though i wonder if a male reader would disagree about smith's success with that.)...less

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Jessica rated it:

02/23/08

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: oh, probably Eric

Fellow writers: you know that feeling when you read an author's work and you hang your head in your hands and think, "Damn, I'll never have as much wit or insight as this author does in her pinky toe?"

If such writer-jealousy plagues you often, don't pick up On Beauty. You may weep with jealousy.

I loved every page of On Beauty. Smith captures human idiosyncrasies with charm in this in this roaringly funny dysfunctional family portrait; a keen satire of over...more

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Meaghan rated it:

08/08/07

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: people who want a nonembarrassing light read for the subway.

Perhaps unfairly, many members of the NOW-NYC book club felt let down by On Beauty. It is hard to explain why. The book’s themes: race and gender relations, body image, and cultural identity, are all important to NOW-NYC and are addressed with care and respect. Because of these themes, our discussion of the book was interesting and thought-provoking. Yet we were expecting something more, and it is hard to articulate what was missing.
Loosely based on the EM Forester classic, Howard’s End...more

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Audrey rated it:

10/06/07

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: The people who recommended it to me?

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 feud betw...more

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Rach rated it:

07/09/08

I read "White Teeth" by Smith, not long after it came out. I cannot remember a lot about it except that it felt "sprawling." I think this book will stick with me a little longer because it's more focused on a few characters, and, in particular, on one family. I can understand the vitriolic words that can arise in academic circles, but the part of the book that dealt with the conflict between the two professors felt a little forced. Perhaps it's because while Howard was ex...more

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Lily rated it:

04/24/07

bookshelves: currently-reading

Read in April, 2007

This third novel by the impossibly young and good-looking Zadie Smith hits mostly resonant notes. All of the reviews are true: it is hilariously funny, at times. But it isn't all mirth. Smith gives us a portrait of a family, and the chapters that emerge of marriage, fidelity - and its opposite, and the glory and ignominity of having nearly grown children are at turns tender and strident - maybe a little judgmental.

She also explores, in modest fashion, women's friendships and women's bodies....more

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Jennifer rated it:

03/03/07

bookshelves: postmodern

Read in December, 2006

recommends it for: zadie smith readers

I’m a fan of satire, and a fan of Zadie Smith's vivid characters and cheeky social commentary, at least in White Teeth. Her third novel On Beauty takes us to a New England college town (Smith taught at Harvard for a stint), where her ambitious send-up of race, class, university politics, and the usual batch of human flaws and failings loses some of her sure-footed moves from White Teeth.

In a sprawling interfamilial narrative, the story follows the decline of British-bo...more

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Doogyjim rated it:

(review of isbn 014101945X)

07/06/07

Read in August, 2006

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

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Addie rated it:

(review of isbn 1594200637)

11/02/07

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: anyone

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. the blac...more

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Talia rated it:

11/14/07

Read in January, 2006

Zadie Smith makes a literary comeback w