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On Beauty
by Zadie Smith
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, the ride is a scream.
by Zadie Smith
MJ Nicholls's review
bookshelves: novels, sassysassenachs, tortured-artists, distaff
Mar 20, 11
bookshelves: novels, sassysassenachs, tortured-artists, distaff
Read from March 13 to 16, 2011
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, the ride is a scream.
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oriana
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rated it 2 stars
Mar 19, 2011 10:47pm
Is this really so good? I'd kind of dismissed her as too popular and therefore somehow not worth my time. Is that another case of me being an elitist bitch?
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Heh. I felt the same before I read White Teeth. This book would appeal more to literary elitists, actually. It's a big nasty satire on college writing programs and doesn't fight hard for the reader's love.
Huh. You make this sounds quite good, MJ; perhaps I actually need to give her a shot. & Jasmine, I'm glad you made the same mistake I did. Why did you assume chick lit?
I'm surprised anyone would assume chick lit! Zadie's idols being Nabokov and Foster Wallace and Barthes. She's well worth reading. Her book of essays also rock the casbah.
well I mean I didn't ask anyone what books zadie bought. but the people who ask for her ask for all the other pastel books. It's like the stockett karen really liked it just existed in a realm that seemed like it would be chick lit
Sounds cool - I liked White Teeth well enough, but never pursed her other books. I'll add this to my list.
Jasmine wrote: "probably cause I'm sexist. title cover combo, and the people who ask for it."
I love that booksellers everywhere have the same biases. That's exactly why I'd dismissed Zadie, now that I think back on it (and Jennifer Egan and Heidi Julavits and so many others): pastel covers, boring titles, and piles of idiots asking for them every day. Anyway, glad that yet again my judgmental-ness might be unfounded. Thanks, MJ.
She is that refreshing contradiction: a bestseller with an intellect. (The cover is hideous, though, and the title a hokey Forster reference).
Agreed that it's certainly not actually chick lit, but it is a Jane Austin remake, apparently, which helped explain my lack of enthusiasm. I liked White Teeth well enough as well, but books like this make me wonder if she's actually full of compassion for her characters or just patronizing them.
There's certainly compassion, of a kind, for Kiki (the mother), but elsewhere, it's mainly mockery and aloof satire. (Which I can tolerate a HUGE amount of).
That's true. Now if only we'd stuck with her more than her husband. Though his reaction to Glee Clubs is notably fantastic, I just recalled.
Interesting. I seem to recall that the book's tendency to derail whenever there was a hint of plot annoyed me (which the digressionist in me is ashamed to admit), but other than that I quite liked it. Perhaps especially the family reunion in England (England? UK, anyway). Bleak place, it seemed. Seriously, though, her characters are so priceless that plot is hardly needed.
Really? I found the plot rather well hewn (if I may use the word hewn) and mostly compelling on a scene-by-scene basis. Nothing stood out as particularly vexing. (And the reunion scene is very bleak. I hope not drawn from personal experience of Zadie's council-estate upbringing).
I guess it just felt like one of those books when you feel nothing is happening at all until you realize after a few chapters quite a lot has happened. And then you're left wondering how that happened. (I happen to like the word "happen" today) Much like a Coetzee in that respect. So no - not vexing - just non-present. But probably present after all. It just didn't feel that way.
MJ I enjoyed re-reading your one-paragraph review scads more than I am enjoying actually reading this crummy six-hundred-page book. I'm about 70 pgs from the end, and unless the ending is so good it sets my fingers on fire turning the pages, I doubt she's getting more than two stars.
Oh dear Oriana, I'm sorry you're not cock-a-hoop about Zadie. When people dislike her they seem to dislike her passionately. It's weird. Still it should be fun to read your review :)
I hope I'll be able to muster some passion for the hate-review, but I think I'm more bewildered that she's such a big star when the book is so so average. PS: "cock-a-hoop"? That's incredible. What on earth is the etymology of that?
I'm sure you'd love her essays. Convinced. Certain. Absolutely persuaded. (My comp. dictionary says "from the phrase to set cock on hoop, to drink festively." That still doesn't really clear it up.)
You know, I'm inclined to believe you, actually. I can tell she's smart and probably interesting, I just don't like the way she paces the story, or the characters she's created. This cockamamie (har-har) expression just gets curiouser and curiouser! Even the internet concurs that it's shrouded in mystery: " The Oxford English Dictionary, in an unusually long speculation on the etymology of the phrase, calls it: 'A phrase of doubtful origin, the history of which has been further obscured by subsequent attempts … to analyze it.'”
I'm afraid we Americans are too immature for such a sexually suggestive expression to get much traction over here.
Mark you have read a book and liked it that I have just bought. Unbelievable :-) I loved White Teeth
