On Beauty | Zadie Smith | Satirical and sensitive

On Beauty | Zadie Smith | Great writing, great characters

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On Beauty

	On Beauty Zadie Smith Penguin Books, 2006 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 199 reviews view larger image
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Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction and from the celebrated author of White Teeth comes another bestselling masterwork

Having hit bestseller lists from the New York Times to the San Francisco Chronicle, this wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars?on both sides of the Atlantic?serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith?s reputation as a major literary talent.

Named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, Time, and Publishers Weekly A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Denver Post, and Publishers Weekly bestseller A Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Atlantic Monthly, Newsday, Christian Science Monitor, and Minneapolis Star Tribune Best Book of the Year Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize BACKCOVER: Praise for On Beauty:

?A thoroughly original tale . . . wonderfully engaging, wonderfully observed . . . That rare thing: a novel that is as affecting as it is entertaining, as provocative as it is humane.?
?Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

?A thing of beauty. Oh happy day when a writer as gifted as Zadie Smith fulfills her early promise with a novel as accomplished, substantive and penetrating as On Beauty.?
?Los Angeles Times

?Smith?s specialty is her ability to render the new world, in its vibrant multiculturalism, with a kind of dancing, daring joy. . . . Her plots and people sing with life. . . . One of the best of the year, a splendid treat. ?
?Chicago Tribune

?Short-listed for [the 2005] Man Booker Prize, On Beauty is a rollicking satire . . . a tremendously good read.?
?San Francisco Chronicle

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Satirical and sensitive

This is the story of two families, each family headed up by a strong-willed academic man. These two patriarchs are opposites and enemies (or rivals, if you want to be optimistic). The emotional center of the book revolves around Howard's struggling marriage to Kiki. This novel is satirical and comic, on the one hand, and heartbreaking and sensitive on the other. Highly recommended.

Great writing, great characters

The Belsey family is about as screwed up as a family can get. The teenage/young adult children speak to their parents irreverently, the parents seem disconnected from each other, but yet, somehow, the love that they all have for each other is obvious from the start. Howard Belsey, the patriarch of the family, however, has no love for Monty Kipps, a rival college professor and someone whom he has challenged professionally for years. But Howard's son, Jerome, is interning for Monty and has fallen in love with Monty's daughter Veronica. This is only the beginning of a story that has the Belsey family intertwined with the Kipps family at every twist and turn.

The Belsey family struggles in many ways - Kiki attempting to overcome Howard's infidelity, Levi, ony 16, trying to find his way in an adult world, Jerome struggling with finding his own identity in the shadow of his parents, and Zora trying to choose between being sensual female and a true intellectual feminist. Each of the characters interacts with a whole host of other characters that bring this book alive.

Set in a conservative college town in the suburbs of Boston, the actual story line of On Beauty is not that original in and of itself. It involves professional rivalries, love won, love lost, and friendship. It deals with standard coming of age difficulties. But what makes this novel fantastic is the excellent character development. The characters simply come alive and the writing makes you feel as though these are actual people you know in a town that you have visited. The author reveals the plot in a seductive way - only a little bit at a time - letting the story cleverly unfold to keep the reader interested. But when she reveals the next piece it is without fanfare - as though you were aware that that particular piece of the puzzle was there the entire time.

A truly enjoyable character driven novel. Zadie Smith continues to craft enjoyable reads that you can really sink your teeth into.

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A pleasant surprise

I don't always like books that are an homage to an earlier work, as On Beauty is to Howard's End. The Hours comes to mind as a completely over-hyped, forced replica of Mrs. Dalloway. But while some of the ties to Howard's End in On Beauty are, indeed, forced a bit, I was nevertheless sucked in to the characters and Zadie Smith's writing style. Smith is a truly gifted prosaist and I look forward to reading more of her works. In spite of some other minor flaws, don't believe the reviews that say this book was "dull" or uninteresting - it is anything but!

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Unjustified Fanfare

The critics gushed over this one. While it is well-written, I couldn't help wondering why it was written.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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