On Beauty: A Novel

Fascinating characters and a roller coaster plot. An honest glimpse into the lives of academia, familial dysfunction, competition, infidelity and race. Zadie Smith is a brilliant writer with an acerbic sense of humor.

Zadie Smith has once again created some interesting characters in her latest book "On Beauty". This time she seems to take some delight in sticking some painful pins in their dolls. Death, infidelity, occupational hazards, and theft are all part of a novel which still, despite these difficulties, provides a lot of entertainment. Two mixed race couples (one British and the other American) and their families find both friendship and hostility in their relationships with each other. The two male heads of family, both academics, are pompous bulls who paw the earth, and roar their political disagreements at each other. One is a liberal and the other a conservative, so what else can you expect?One of the half white, half black sons is so desirous of identifying with his black heritage that his efforts to identify with the black community are often quite comical. A daughter's promiscuity wreaks havoc within the other family. The American father who dearly loves his wife (?) survives one affair that becomes publicly known, and then falls into another one.Fine writing coupled with an interesting tale makes this an enjoyable book. Yet I was a bit disappointed; this book does not match up to her first novel "White Teeth". Some of the family members lacked definition. Perhaps there's just too large a cast to be able to do justice to without writing a much longer book. And, sadly, this novel lacked the wit of "White Teeth". Ms Smith did have one funny farcical scene when our professor was the guest of a student at a college banquet. It seems that there is something about small choral groups singing in harmony that he finds hilariously funny. Sure enough a choral group marches on stage during this black tie dinner, and starts singing. The prof's reaction to their performance totally embarrasses his student, and himself. To me this was the funniest part of the novel. Smith is an expert at this kind of inanity, and I just wishe there had been more of it. All in all, though, it's a good read.

I purchased this novel on the strength of a recommendation from Ann Patchett and wanted to love it, but cannot for the life of me understand why it was so widely lauded. It was interesting enough in the beginning, the writing was fluent and clever, and I found it compelling for a while. However, I grew to loathe the male protagonist more and more as the narrative progressed, and while I appreciated the academic satire, I found little humor elsewhere. The friendship between Kiki and Carlene was the only thing that moved me, and of course that was abruptly brought to an unhappy end -- a harbinger of the completely unsatisfying conclusion of the novel itself. I had soldiered on, hoping it would all come together in a brilliant denouement, but alas, it did not. Most disappointing!

10/19/05It is an honor to review ON BEAUTY, Zadie Smith. I read the book, putting it down only to walk the dog, talk with my husband and sleep. I regretted leaving the people in the book when it ended.On Beauty is full of characters; perhaps this is a flaw, but I found the people exciting and all were differentiated, most growing or changing in some way in the course of the book. The book begins with a BANG and ends with a bang and a whimper; how, I wonder, will the people go on with their lives? Reading On Beauty is similar to walking down a crowded street in lower Manhattan, a street filled with people of every nation, every color, all talking with or often at cross purposes to each other, but all, nonetheless, living full lives.If for no other reason than this next one, the book is worth reading: Zadie Smith has an absolutely accutely attuned ear for accents. She has captured, on paper, the accents of people from all economic, educational and social walks of life. It is amazing to hear people talking so clearly on paper. Who am I to say this, but I will take this chance: I do believe that 40, 50 years from now, when people want to know what life was like in 2005, they will just pick up this book and enter life in our present, their past.This book is about people in all our glorious, basic, stupid and fantastic selves, with hundreds of roads to take, but the one taken really does make a difference in peoples' lives.I think that you cannot skim this book. It is actually an easy read, but the book is so full of people and ideas and those marvellous accents, that only a careful reading will allow you to enter fully into this book. I can hardly wait until Smith's next book. I also read Smith's book, White Teeth, but truly, I feel that this book definitely tops White Teeth. Zadie Smith is only 30 years old--imagine what her "take" on life will be as she grows older???

excellent condition, on time delivery

Kann nicht erinnern, dass es mir jemals so leid getan hat, dass ein Buch zu Ende war.Habe auch etwa 50 Seiten gebraucht, dass ich in der Geschichte „drinnen“ war - aber dann….Mit jeder Seite entdeckt man neue Facetten der vielschichtigen Personen, liebevoll geschildert, humorvoll, politisch, explizit, mit allen Schattierungen des ganz normalen Lebens.Möchte zu gern wissen, wie das Leben der Protagonisten weitergeht…..

Brilliantly written book, loved every moment and the awesome depth of characters. The story had be totally engaged from the start

Simply remarkable, witty writing. On Beauty is a subtle criticism of class-schemed academic microcosms, where nothing is what is seems. The more beautiful it looks, the worse it turns out to be when reading between the lines. Like Rambrandt's paintings that Howard and Monty keep intellectualizing about, there is always far more beneath the surface than the eye originally meets. In Smith's work, only the poor souls are pure and protected from corruption. Academics, intellectuals venture with their eyes closed into immoral affairs and the constant destruction of the basic principles from their education, though ground-landed as it was. Smith offers a dip inside a metisse commingling of things and people who were obviously never meant to get together in the first place, and the mess that comes out of it. I had a great time reading it, with boundless admiration for the writing.

Uno de los mejores libros que he leído. Me encantó.