Jul 24

Jul 24 On Beauty

Author: Zadie Smith
Publisher: Penguin Books
View on Goodreads

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Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

Howard Belsey, a Rembrandt scholar who doesn't like Rembrandt, is an Englishman abroad and a long-suffering professor at Wellington, a liberal New England arts college. He has been married for thirty years to Kiki, an American woman who no longer resembles the sexy activist she once was. Their three children passionately pursue their own paths: Levi quests after authentic blackness, Zora believes that intellectuals can redeem everybody, and Jerome struggles to be a believer in a family of strict atheists. Faced with the oppressive enthusiasms of his children, Howard feels that the first two acts of his life are over and he has no clear plans for the finale. Or the encore.

Then Jerome, Howard's older son, falls for Victoria, the stunning daughter of the right-wing icon Monty Kipps, and the two families find themselves thrown together in a beautiful corner of America, enacting a cultural and personal war against the background of real wars that they barely register. An infidelity, a death, and a legacy set in motion a chain of events that sees all parties forced to examine the unarticulated assumptions which underpin their lives. How do you choose the work on which to spend your life? Why do you love the people you love? Do you really believe what you claim to? And what is the beautiful thing, and how far will you go to get it?

Set on both sides of the Atlantic, Zadie Smith's third novel is a brilliant analysis of family life, the institution of marriage, intersections of the personal and political, and an honest look at people's deceptions. It is also, as you might expect, very funny indeed.

TL;DR Review

On Beauty is a literary family drama that feels simultaneously like comfort food and watching a train wreck in slow motion.

For you if: You read for the characters.

Full Review

On Beauty was my latest read from the #ReadingWomen challenge, as it won the Women’s Prize in 2006. This was my first Zadie Smith, but it will most certainly not be my last!

This book tells the story of the Belsey family — father Howard, mother Kiki, and children Jerome, Zora, and Levi. Howard is an art history professor at a tiny, pretentious liberal arts college outside Boston, and he has a bit of a feud with a man named Monty Kipps, whose wife and two children are also main characters. The members of the two families clash and push and befriend and betray and it’s all very messy but also human.

Reading this book was partly like sinking into comfort food, and partly like watching a train wreck happen in slow motion, lol. In the best, most impressive way. . Zadie Smith's writing is fluid and warm and inviting, and she builds characters that feel so real they could break your heart even before anything has happened to them. I would go to war for Kiki or Levi, or even Jerome.

At the same time, her ability to craft tension in conversation — and especially to highlight things like racial microaggressions without explicitly pointing them out to you — will make you literally squirm in your chair. All while your heart aches for these people and you root for them and cry for them and barrel forward word after word after word.

Writing like this makes me simultaneously want to write things myself...and give up writing forever, lol.