On Beauty: A Novel

I highly recommend this novel to anyone who loves the rich novels of the 19th century. This book modernizes the delivery system of the 19th century novel and creates a world that beckons you in. You find yourself questioning one set reality, and are forced to consider intrinsic ratification. Wow, I loved it!

After hearing several people suggest that this was indeed a good book, I made the purchase. This certainly wasn't one of the worst books I have ever read, but it is certainly very poorly written. As you read chapter after chapter, you are left wondering why exactly you are reading this book in the first place. I can't say I have ever read any other of Zadie Smith's works, but throughout the entire book, I couldn't help but feel like a 13-14 year old decided to write a book. You wanted to like the characters and find something interesting, but the book never delivers. I certainly regret making the purchase instead of borrowing the book from a friend or the library. If you are truly interested in reading this book, don't let me discourage you, but do not BUY the book.

I cannot understand the praise this book has received. The subject matter was kind of boring, the characters completely unbelievable. It was an ok read and I laughed once or twice but it was really nothing special.

I was really disappointed in this book. I had heard such rave reviews but it definitely was a book I struggled through and only finished since I bought it new and kept thinking I would find something redeeming in it.

Read this book after hearing the very engaging author Ms. Smith, but book did not live up to the interview. On Beauty tries to tackle all the issues of our time through the lens of two academic families at a fictitious college town. But it all comes off like a hyperactive game of whiffle ball, with characters swinging at each topic of the day as they come zinging by-racism, liberalism/conservatism, blackness, whiteness, interracial marriage, family dynamics, economic differences, etc). The writing is solid but the dialogue sometimes lurches into ponderous lectures. Aside from Kiki, the characters seem to drone on and on about things you might give half a thought to before getting on with that crazy 'ol thing called life.

This novel is Zadie Smith's homage to 'Howards End' by E.M. Forster as it plot loosely parallels Forster's masterpiece, dealing with the issues of class, appearance and, in Smith's narrative, black people's identity.

The story focuses on two very dissimilar families. The Besley family consists of Howard, a liberal university professor, his African-American wife Kiki and their children Jerome, Zora and Levi. The Kipps family is lead by conservative Trinidadian professor Monty, his wife Carlene and their children Victoria and Michael.

Smith cleverly interwines their lives, portraying the clash not only of their ideologies but also of their personal affairs. The conflict between Howard and Monty has being developed for several years, as their different approaches towards art makes they stand in totally opposite positions. During the story, the members of their families become more and more connected, creating bonds that the patriarchs don't agree with: Jerome works as an intern for Monty, having an affair with his daughter Victoria; Kikki and Carlene become friends, not taking into account their different backgrounds and beliefs; Monty's family moves and he starts working in the same university as Howard does, becoming a clearly opposition to what-used-to-be Howard's influential leadership.

As the novel takes place in an imagined upper-class white context, the author places significant issues regarding being black in the development of the novel. For instance, Kikki feels isolated as the black wife of a white professor, saying that '(her) whole life is white. (She doesn't) see any black folk unless they be cleaning.' Meanwhile, her son Levi resorts to the city to find people he can identified with, changing his way of speaking, copying the street style he feels as the real black talk.

As you can see, this story is complex, intense, intelligent, puzzling, and more! Zadie Smith has created a masterpiece, becoming one of the most promising writers of her generation. Her power of observation fills the novel with a more deep understanding of topics that concerns the citizents of our contemporary world, without disregarding the pleasure you can find in a well-written story.

The heart wants what the heart wants and the heart knows what we've forgot... Designed in love, for love, to be loved, but ultimately to give love. That is the whole point, right? That's the beauty of life, right?

On the outside looking in, Howard Belsey is living the 'good' life, but by whose standards? The wife he's cheated on? The children who look up to him whom he's let down? His students? His colleagues? Those who reside outside of the lush, protected, over privileged Wellington environment?

Love is a frail thing. Like a flower that blooms in Spring. It lasts in its season and then it dies... And if we're lucky, that which withers away will return another day. That is the true beauty of it. When all else fails, love to some degree will prevail.

Brilliant.

Yesterday evening, I finished Zadie Smith's On Beauty and was left in awe. Then, I was smacked with the realization that Smith is only two years older than me. This left me feeling a mix of emotions, still awe-struck, but also a bit down. I can't imagine having even a small fraction of the writing talent that Smith possesses. And by the way, the novel was published in 2005. Sigh.

Smith's novel, On Beauty, is a multi-family social class drama set against the backdrop of a liberal arts college in Boston. ​

I was initially pulled into the story by it's vibrant characters, rich subtext and scathing humor. However, having not read any reviews regarding this novel, I didn't have the light-bulb moment until mid-way through the book. I kept thinking that elements of the story seemed very familiar and then it hit me.​

This is a retelling of E. M. Forster's Howards End. ​

Howards End is my favorite novel and favorite movie. How did I not realize this sooner? ​

I didn't notice it, because Smith is so slick with how she worked it in. Primarily, she changed the context, which on the surface made the story seem like it was about race. It is about race, in part, but even more key, it is about social class.​

Smith sets her retelling primarily in America and most of the characters are of African heritage. This ups the stakes from Forster's drama about white people living in England. However, both stories are very much about the differences among social classes and the rules of their interactions affecting the characters in both stories.

Smith levels the playing field by spreading her characters amongst all of the social classes, irrespective of racial identity. Race is a factor, as the characters are living in a primarily white college town and they struggle to create an identity that honors both their social status and race. ​All of the characters are in a constant identity struggle and unsure of their proper place according to society. The characters are bound to their social status and have a difficult time discussing their identity issues with those in other social classes. There is a huge divide amongst the characters that is based on class, rather than race.

The characters in On Beauty don't necessarily measure up neatly with those in Howards End. This is one of the notable and brilliant aspects of Smith's writing. It's not completely transparent.

Some of the characters match based on sensibilities. An example is the character of Victoria, the daughter of the wealthiest family in Smith's novel. She matches with Jacky Bast, the poorest character in Forester's novel. The two characters both struggle to gain a little power and generally are left to the mercy of those around them. They both have a great deal of pride that gets knocked down, leaving them weak and helpless. the characters completely mirror each other, but not in obvious way.

This mismatch of the characters from the two novels is repeated throughout Smith's story, making it a really compelling read. I was hooked on the book before realizing the parallels, but once I became clued in, I found the story impossible to put down.​

On top of that, Smith writes a story that is filled with so many nuances and great discussion topics. I felt like I should be reading this for a class and taking notes, rather than a pleasure read. This book begs to have a term paper written about it. I feel like by pleasure reading it, I didn't absorb all of the layers. ​

Speaking of writing a term paper, the novel​'s college setting and having several of the main characters as academics, is another level to the story. It is in this arena that Smith brings out her biting humor and exposes many hypocrisies, both with her characters and with society in general. Smith had a keen idea to move Forester's story of social classes on to a college campus.

On a personal note, I was never so struck by social class until I attended a liberal arts college and realized that everyone around me came from a similar family financial background. It's bizarre to grow up in an area rich with diversity and then go to a college where there is so much sameness. Smith nailed it.

It has been a long time since I have read a novel that made me so excited. Reading Smith's novel has made me fall in love with writing again and all of it's possibilities.

Just brilliant. Read it. ​

Please visit my blog for more reviews and bookish things!

A dysfunctional academic family, headed by a dysfunctional academic, fights intellectual, academic, and personal battles. Howard Belsey finds himself teaching at the same institution as his arch-rival. More disastrously, he finds himself infatuated with his rival's college-age daughter. Victoria Kipps is a bit of a temptress, and Howard has no ability to control himself. Add to this equation Howard's long-suffering wife, Kiki, his academic superstar daughter Zora, one son competing with his father for Victoria, another fighting political battles he doesn't understand, and it becomes clear that this family is on the fast-track to disaster. The book is set in what looks very much like Wellesley, Massachusetts, and I kept thinking that the school was modeled on Wellesley College (it's co-ed, but in all other respects seems a match). At least, that's how I kept envisioning it.

I enjoyed the academic setting of this book, and absurdities of that world, which Smith details well. There were many times during the book when I simply wanted to hit Howard. I learned that I have very little tolerance for the weak-male mid-life crisis. I also occasionally wanted to smack Zora, who has a tendency towards the obnoxious. So, the characters are not exactly likable, hardly so. It says something that despite that I enjoyed this book very much.

After all the over the top reviews following Mrs Smith first novel,I jumped on the bandwagon,boy do I regret it.The author is one of those writers who takes pleasure in making it impossible to the reader to follow the story.She write "difficult"with a certain arrogance like she is way above her reader.The great ones do their writing in all simplicity like having a good conversation.See a Mo Yan,Saramago or Garcia Marquez.
And personally I did not appreciate when Mrs Smith seems to be degrading the Haitian characters in this novel,a trait she shares with Paolo Coelho.
The ZERO BARRE in "Haitian" French would be the equivalent of "0 star minus 2 stars".
Now you have it Mrs Smith

I never knew the lives of those in academia could be so interesting until I began On Beauty.

Howard Belsey and Monty Kipps are both Rembrandt scholars and arch academic rivals. After Kipps' daughter, Vee, and Belsey's son, Jerome, had a brief yet eventful courtship, it seemed as if these two families could go back to living peacefully on separate continents. This peace would be short lived. When Monty Kipps accepts a teaching position at Wellington in the same academic environment as Howard Belsey, it turns out to be anything but peace for either family.

While their husbands are assuming fighting positions, Kiki Belsey and Carlene Kipps are forming a friendship. Their new friendship does not strike a balance between the families because the children in each prove to be wild cards. Vee often strays from the Christian value of chastity taught in her home. Zora Belsey is an annoying overachiever with body image and daddy issues. Levi Belsey is trying to shed his privileged background in the land of hip-hop. Jerome Belsey and Micheal Kipps, the oldest sibling of each family, are simply trying to be a support for their family members during all their ups and downs.

Both Howard and Monty proved to be full of hot air that neither of them get tired of spewing everywhere. Of the two it was Howard I despised the most. Not just because of his infidelities but he also seemed to be forever out of touch with his wife and children. Kiki Belsey, an African-American woman from the South, holds the Belsey's together. She puts on strength in the midst of all the Belsey chaos. Carlene Kipps is often pushed aside and overlooked by her family. This oversight proves beneficial in the keeping of a devastating secret.

Zadie Smith does an amazing job with the dialogue in On Beauty. What I enjoyed the most about this novel is the fact that the families had major problems that weren't glossed over. Mothers that didn't have all the answers. Marriages that were anything but fairy tales. Children with issues. In the end, Smith did not put a bow on it. She let it be. Great writing.

A story about a very liberal mixed race family living in a Cambridge-like college town, how they live, and how they nearly implode. The story centers on the Belsey family, and more so on Howard Belsey, the British-born art history professor hoping and waiting for tenure at Wellington, a fictional stand-in for Harvard or some other small, elite, ivy-walled university.

I found Howard hard to like. He makes a marriage-threatening mistake, and just when it seems the relationship might heal, he makes a similar, ickier mistake. But beyond that, he is self-centered, cornering conversations, even with his college-age children who might have something to say. He doesn't permit the family to celebrate even a secular version of Christmas because it assaults his atheist and non-commercial views, he only allows abstract art to be displayed in the house despite what his wife loves, he doesn't support his eldest son, Jerome, after a heartache because the girl comes from a religious family (and is the daughter of his academic foe), and he doesn't take Jerome's growing Christianity seriously. So he's a pretty rigid, my-way-or-the-highway liberal.

But even though he's not likable as a "person," complicated characters like Howard are awfully fun to come across in a book, and Smith gives us many such characters. Howard's wife, Kiki, is an African American nursing administrator, a stout-hearted woman from the south and an earthy foil to Howard. She can turn on the southern sass, but never becomes a caricature. During a long period of marital crisis, she strikes up a lovely friendship with an unlikely newcomer in the neighborhood. Jerome is the quiet, spurned, Christian boy getting his education at Brown, so therefore away from the action for most of the story. Daughter Zora is the ambitious, entitled middle child, a student at Wellington who takes a forceful, activist role that blows back in her face. Levi, still in high school, has adopted a more urban, "street" persona that runs counter to his upbringing but represents for him a more authentic way of being black.

Beyond interesting characters, Smith gives us much to consider about race, religion, art, politics, liberal, conservatives - all the big stuff, and she does it in a natural way, as these themes arise in the course the normal goings-on within an academic community. Heck, I'm pretty left-leaning myself, yet got a better sense of a religious, conservative view of homosexuality from a speech made by Monty Kipps, an art history professor new to Wellington, an Howard's more celebrated rival.

So yes, a great book, and one that will send me to the library looking for more of her titles.

Our literature-writing class read this novel at NYU, and most of us really enjoyed it. Based upon E.M.Forster's 1910 classic, HOWARD'S END, which has the theme and refrain of "only connect", this novel highlights connection, or lack thereof, between two families.

Set in a fictional town in Wellington, Massachusetts, outside of Boston, it gently satirizes academics (my favorite scene was a faculty meeting) and their families. There's a liberal atheist Englishman professor and his African-American wife who have three children. The professor is working in Wellington at a small, prestigious college. Then there's a Trinidadian conservative Christian family, whose professor father is working in England, and then moves to Wellington to work at the same prestigious college. The children link up, much to the consternation of the adults, and there is academic rivalry between the fathers at the small prestigious university.

This novel, like Forster's, highlights the economic and cultural differences among classes while focusing on the complex relationships among its characters.

Zadie Smith is very clever in how she transposes HOWARD'S END plot points to more modern times. The writing is splendid and the book kept our interest. The book is on the longish side, and perhaps could have been shortened slightly to make it more powerful. Smith is a talented and original author. This book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2005. 4.5 stars.

This was an okay book, but the characters were very cliche. My biggest problem is the description of life on a US college campus, or rather with the description of its administration and structure. A really famous guy, Monty, is invited to campus for a year, presumably only a week or two before classes start (or else for some odd reason his nemesis, a prof. at the college, doesn't find out until then). Then he decides to give a series of lectures attacking the liberalism of colleges like this, and to try to end the college practice of having poor people sit in on classes. UNBELIEVABLE. This would never happen. Nobody invites someone at the last minute and lets them have a say about admin. In general, Monty is such a cliche it's almost unbearable--he's not even a real person. there are lots of other completely unbelievable things concerning college life: the college library is on one floor of the English Department--huh? Faculty meetings involve all the humanities faculty, which seems to consist of about 10 people. Monty is invited to campus without Belsey's knowledge, even though they are both Rembrandt scholars--??? How many small campuses need two Rembrandt scholars? The list goes on . . . not a believable depiction of college life.

It was interesting; as I read through this book a single quote kept going through my head.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive! - Sir Walter Scott

This wasn't a story I was expecting. I'd read that Zadie Smith is witty and funny and I think part of me expected this to be a hilarious, fun book. It's not that - but don't get me wrong. I laughed out loud more than a few times for various reasons.

I think what struck me most and why this book really hit hard is not only the exceptional quality of writing (which really amazed me) but also the depth of the characters. Zadie Smith managed to take characters that could almost be stereotypical and put enough of a twist on them that I didn't know exactly what to expect from them as the story progresses. And above everything else.. these were real characters. There was no preference toward the more liberal or conservative arguments made in the book by the characters, everything was just laid out, unashamed, bold and without mercy for the reader to absorb.

Most of all I felt as if these are people that I could know. I don't know how else to express it and wish I had the same talent with words. My best advice would be for you to experience this story and figure out what I'm talking about that way - but prepare yourself.. there are parts of this book that are brutal. There is language, unforgiving sexual encounters and this is not a "feel good" story. But it's one that made me think and slow down and absorb what I was reading.

There is one quote I'd like to talk about, because it's something that I've been thinking about a lot recently, especially as one of my sisters has had a recent birthday and is now approaching 30. Zadie Smith speaks on the relationship between Jerome, Zora and Levi.. three siblings that feature prominently in the book.

People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two lovers, but this too was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs and colleges and movies and clothes and opinions and foreign travel - before all of these things there had been only one person, Zora, and only one place: a tent in the living room made from chairs and bed-sheets. After a few years, Levi arrived; space was made for him; it was as if he had always been. Looking at them both now, Jerome found himself in their finger joints and neat conch ears, in their long legs and wild curls. He heard himself in their partial lisps caused by puffy tongues vibrating against slightly noticeable buckteeth. He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love; they were the first evidence he ever had of love and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.

Isn't that a beautiful piece of writing? That is something I've felt while sitting in that peaceful quiet between siblings, while listening to them talk to one another, while laying beside them on the floor sharing a loud bout of laughter.

Ultimately, this is a book that is about relationships. The relationships between the right wing and left wing, the husband and wife, brothers and sisters, boyfriends and girlfriends, wealthy and poor. It is a pretty fantastic read.

Zadie Smith's third novel has the multi-cultural and multi-racial themes of her earlier novels. But this time she doesn't showcase them; she uses them to paint a bigger picture. As the title suggests, this book is about the nature of beauty. The protagonist is Howard Belsey, a college professor at a Harvard-like college in Boston called Wellington. His family is about as `mixed' as one can get. A white British man, he's married to a black American woman named Kiki. To further mix it up, Kiki is an office worker and, though she tries, isn't much of an intellectual. Howard is somewhat of a failure at his work. He teaches a class that questions what we view as beautiful in art. Not many students attend more than the first class, probably because it's difficult. (We are briefly introduced to a student, Katie Armstrong, who is a successful student but struggles mightily to understand Howard's lectures.) Further, he is writing a critical book about Rembrandt that he can never seem to finish.

From Howard's perspective, everyone is an antagonist, (even Rembrandt) his wife, his three kids, his students. But set up as his official foil is Monty Kips, a Trinidadian British scholar. He is Howard's opposite in every way: black, conservative, and successful. His book on Rembrandt- a glowingly positive one- has come out and sits atop the best seller list. As the story begins, Howard's eldest son Jerome, a born-again Christian to boot, is in London working and staying with the Kipps'. He has a short-lived and disappointing sexual dalliance with the Kipps' beautiful daughter Victoria.

Next the story moves ahead nine months, the Kipps' have moved to Boston because Monty has gotten a position at Wellington, disturbing both Howard and Jerome, who is trying to get over Victoria. Howard has committed an infidelity, though how significant that is remains to be seen. A young poet from the ghetto is introduced to the delight of Howard's college-aged daughter Zora and teenaged son Levi. And Kiki meets Monty's eccentric wife Carlene. With that, the pot is stirred until Howard is transformed by the most unlikely of people. But perhaps too late.

Smith is fantastic writer. This was apparent from the first page of her first novel, White Teeth. But she has been an underachiever of sorts, because for its great start, White Teeth sinks at its end, and her second novel, Autograph Man, was a mess from the get-go. On Beauty makes amends for both those failures. It is a mature novel that addresses the biggest questions of them all (life, happiness, how we go our own direction while maintaining a relationship with someone going in the opposite direction) with her own unique style. Yes, there are slow parts. Yes, she changes POV a lot, sometimes to the point of distraction. Yes, some of her characters are shallow, not fully baked, and sometimes stereotypically overblown. Yes, the story can be depressing, especially where some of our characters end up. But the work gels. The resolution at the very end is beautiful, and worth the effort of reading this beautiful book.

For me, this falls between 'White Teeth' and 'The Autograph Man'. I really liked it. END REVIEW.

Just kidding.

Smith retains her witty, charming prose style. Moreover, she maintains an interest in racial issues and popular culture, but it these themes are never what the book is really about. Smith's novels are, so far, like Woody Allen's or Wes Anderson's films-- works by wonderful stylists that you can kind of know going into watching if you'll like it, whatever the strength of script. Smith's prose is wonderful as ever. I love it. Yet the respective structures and pacing of her three novels are variously strong. The characters, too, are variously compelling. This is her most America-centric novel thus far, too, which makes sense now that she splits her time between the US and UK.

Ultimately, 'On Beauty' is a morality play (of sorts). Not to reveal too much, but protagonist and antagonist alike behave in similarly a/im/moral ways despite their espoused views. Indeed, they hold their views in-spite of their backgrounds: the white British liberal contra West Indian-British conservative. Perhaps to add more cultural contrast (or maybe more shades of grey is a better way of describing it?), the multiracial children of the white British liberal and his black Floridian wife struggle to make themselves fit into New England settings with the various white, African American, and Haitian communities. Once again, these backgrounds are just all backdrop to the morality play, not major driving factors its plot.

So! If you like Smith's writing style, buy this book, I doubt you'll be disappointed. If you're so-so on her style, it's a good story and you may still like it on its own merits-- it is loosely based on 'Howard's End', so if you liked that book you might like this 21st century interpretation.

The plot and structure reminded me of a daytime soap opera like All My Children (with profanity), two families always bumping into each other whether in Massachusetts or England.

The writer Zadie Smith, covers a lot of ground through these families. University life, art history, adultery, death, crime, sex, hip-hop, Christianity, right-wing/left-wing politics, affirmative-action, class, Haiti, beauty, you name it, it's there.

I would've enjoyed the storytelling more if there was at least one main character who had some good morals to cheer for. The only character that did, died midway through the book which left a lot of moronic behavior and made everyone seem rather ridiculous.
Despite this, the characters do come off extremely real and the dialogue is very spot-on most of the time. Credit that to the great writing skills of Ms Zadie Smith.

I enjoyed the audio book read by Peter Francis James who did a great job weaving in all the diverse characters. (I kept imagining the role of Howard Belsey being played by Tim Gunn of "Project Runway") I'm not sure if I could've read it manually. It seemed overly long.

Based on all the rave reviews that this book received, I should have loved it. Instead, I had to force myself to complete this pretentious, plodding bore, since I truly hate to give up on any book

I found the characters to not be at all well defined. Just when I though I might get some deeper insight into one of them, the author moved on to another character. The book starts out with e-mails from Jerome to Howard. Very interesting. However, Jerome essentially disappears from the rest of the book. Claire, Carl, and Levi - I was waiting to find out a great deal more about these characters, but instead I had to read the boring and incredibly predictable scene in which Victoria and Howard have sex (honestly, who was surprised by this?) What is the hot, sexy college student Victoria's motivation for wanting to have sex with the 50ish year old Howard? This is never explained. And in the end, when Howard spurns her further advancements, do we find out anything more about her? No. We do however find out that Howard simply likes her. Why? What's to like?

I also found the story to be incredibly disjointed. Various story lines were started and then dropped. Howard's visit with his father, the developing friendship between Kiki and Carlene, The painting that Carlene "willed" to Kiki, Jerome's Christianity and many others. None of these things were explored to their fullest.

The author must have been paid by the word. There are numerous page long plus paragraphs that say absolutely nothing. This book needed a better editor since it could have been shortened by about 100 pages and we wouldn't have missed a thing.

Another reviewer recommended Richard Russo's STRAIGHT MAN and I couldn't agree more. It is a wonderful book about academia. Better characters, better story. Give that one a try instead.

On Beauty starts out so promising, but quickly loses its way. A drama about two men (Howard Belsey, a liberal, non-religious English man, and Monty Kipps, a conservative right-wing Christian) who teach at a fictitious university outside Boston and their families has the makings of a great story.

Unfortunately, while it may impress intellectual critics, it fails to draw in the average reader. The initial few pages set the stage with Jerome Belsey sending e-mails to his father while living and working with the conservative Kipps family. After those few e-mails, the story never connects the dots. There is no lack of characters: Howard Belsey, Kiki Belsey, Jerome Belsey. Zora Belsey, Levi Belsey, Monty Kipps, Catherine Kipps, Michael Kipps, Victoria Kipps, faculty from the fictitious university, a group of street vendors and the people who make up the fringes of the school; however, we learn very little about any one character and On Beauty jumps from story to story with no actual beginning and no conclusion.

I finished the book only because I hoped to grasp a "greater" purpose this cast of characters would reveal but, if there was one, it escaped me.

What could be more beautiful than a family? Why, the debacles of two of course! Awarded the Orange Prize for Fiction, On Beauty follows the Belsey and the Kipps families through 443 pages of shenanigans that only family can forgive.

The Belsey family is made up of Howard and Kiki who are the parents of Levi, Zora and Jerome. Howard is a white Englishman and Kiki is a voluptuous African American. They've been married thirty years and have lived the last ten years in a Boston University community where Howard has been an art history professor. Kiki, once an activist, works at the local hospital.

The Kipps, an all black family from London, includes Monty and Carlene as the heads and their children Michael and Victoria. Monty is also an art history master and Howard's arch nemesis and vice versa. Circumstances lead the Kippses to the same town and same university as the Belseys where frictions arise between the men and the siblings.

The ongoing racial and art war going on between Howard and Monty is what drives a wedge between these two families. Howard is for affirmative action and Monty is not. Their battle has been in the newspapers, on the radio, in interviews and in books. Now it's on Howard's home turf; except he hasn't been given tenure yet. Only Carlene and Kiki are willing to put past differences aside and co-exist amicably.

The characters don't stop with these two families. There's the antiquated university staff, knowledge hungry students, angry Haitian street vendors, melodramatic Hip Hop writers and both talented and untalented poets. All these relationships show a definite balance of wants and needs; and haves and have nots.

Zadie's character development made me want to follow these two families through their day to day lives and interactions. Now that it is over I still want more. There are a lot of characters, main and supporting but all have a purpose, even a young child protégé who's only mentioned in a page and a half. Her perspective, given by the narrator, lends to Howard's personality.

On Beauty is rich with the emotional turmoil of love, hate, deception, redemption, politics, art, racism, acceptance and of course the draw beauty has on us.

My favourite character in the book is Kiki. I love her name, I love her body and I love her personality. Kiki is resentful for having been isolated from other black people. "Everywhere we go, I'm alone in this... this sea of white." She made me laugh, she made me cry, she made me proud. She is a large beautiful woman who carries herself well despite her husband cheating on her. She uses this heartache to locate the woman she once was and to build on the woman she has become. Her self-acceptance is inspiring and she is the character who has grown the most by the end.

I've probably made this sound like quite a serious book but it was really quite light hearted and amusing. The humour of every day life and how silly people (young and old) can be is around every corner. The storyline is intense enough to peak your sense. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Reviewed by M. E. Wood.

On the face of things the two families featured in Zadie Smith's On Beauty are fairly functional. The Belsey family lives in New England, near Boston to be more precise. Howard is English and white. Kiki, the wife, is from Florida and is black. There are three intensely sophisticated progeny, Jerome, Levi and Zora. The Kipps family, meanwhile, lives in Old England in a less than fashionable area of north London. Monty and Carlene are black British with Caribbean roots. Their children are the delectable Victoria and an older, cool, already achieving son, who figures little in the tale. Both husbands are academics. Howard is a specialist on art history and is an arch-liberal. His rival, Monty, is almost rabidly neo-conservative. They have feuded for some time, academically speaking, despite their families being on good enough terms to want to stay with one another. When the story opens, Jerome Belsey is in London and has fallen for the obvious charms of Victoria Kipps and is suggesting engagement. Now wouldn't that complicate things!

As the book progresses we learn that these apparent domestic heavens are less perfect than they appear. The two fathers are not as dedicated to the promotion of domestic harmony as they at first seem. Romances bud and blossom amongst and between the younger members of the plot. There are inter-generational liaisons of various kinds.

There is also a heightened professional rivalry between Howard and Monty. There ensues an ideological battle that intensifies when Monty joins Howard's US college on an invitation. Monty tries to stir things up and, as ever, liberals are his prime target. Howard effectively assists by rising to take the bait, trying, as liberals sometimes do, to equalise before he has gone behind.

Zora, Howard's daughter, wants to enrol in a poetry class. There are no places, however, because the tutor - a poet who has a special relationship with Howard - takes in talented candidates who are not actually on the college roll. A campaign is launched and Zora, her dad and Monty are in the thick of the argument. Things come to a head when a poor lad from the rough end of town is invited to join the class because of his unique gift for rap. An accommodation must be found. Victoria, Monty's daughter also figures on campus and she manages to complicate most things simply by looking the way she does.

Basically the lives of these families begin to unravel as tensions pull at the frayed ends of their lives. Zadie Smith writes with great poignancy and irony. She is particularly successful in characterising the generational gaps, and she does this without ever sounding clichéd or patronising. The sex that simmers throughout just beneath the surface occasionally bubbles through and, when it does, it generally makes quite a mess.

In theory, all these people want to do the right thing by and for others, but when opportunities arise, they usually can't resist the pull of blatant self-interest. They all profess the long view, but in reality they all live for the moment, and that is usually passing.

On Beauty is a convincing and moving portrait of modern family life. Zadie Smith consistently resists the temptation to pitch the populist against the elitist. Her characters merely live, and the ups and downs they all suffer are eventually no more than their individual and collective experience.

Wellington is a fictitious college somewhere near Boston. Howard is a white art history professor who cheated on his black wife, Kiki, with a white poetry professor, Claire. Howard is a staunch proponent of affirmative action and liberal politics in general, and Howard's nemesis, Monty, a black professor, is a stalwart of the religious right who wants to take the "liberal" out of liberal arts. There is a fair amount of contention among Howard's colleagues over Monty's right to espouse his right-wing opinions in a series of lectures and over Claire's right to include poor but talented students in her very exclusive poetry class, even though they are not enrolled at Wellington. These issues, however, are not as compelling as the more intimate ones facing Howard's family. The book opens with the very uncomfortable scene where Howard attempts to break off the engagement of his son Jeremy to Monty's daughter, Victoria, when the whole thing was a rather unfortunate misunderstanding. In fact, the book's most memorable events are all somewhat embarrassing, including Howard's youngest son Levi's attempt to rally his co-workers to refuse to work on Christmas Day. The irony is that Levi's family members are mostly atheists, and his coworkers are actually pumped about the opportunity to be paid double-time for the holiday. Howard and Kiki's daughter Zora's forte is argument, and she manages to blackmail her way into Claire's poetry class. The ten or so main characters become tangled in relationships with one another that are often surprising and usually regrettable. Although Kiki is the emotional and ethical conscience in the family, no one person is truly the central character; it's more of an ensemble cast. The finale happens in sort of a flourish that puts the finishing touches on this colorful canvas of a family with still a few challenges ahead.

If this book owes its "structure" to Howard's End (as the author readily admits), it nonetheless seems better compared to Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons." Like that 2004 novel, "On Beauty" shows how college campuses simmer with the tensions of diversity. Race and class flare up to confound the lives of the Belseys and Kipps.

In this case, the campus is Wellington. I believe that Wellington is supposed to be in Boston. The setting is current. Characters go to poetry jams, have views on current affairs, and make mistakes with powerpoints and emails.

And, the book is very upfront. She takes on figures like "Condaleeza and Colin." Why do they seem to reject a system that may have given them a start? Equally, what really comes of years of orations in art history class? How can people take a painting about love and become competitive about its interpretation, especially if they cannot pursue love in their own life?

The thing I like about this book is the way that it handles the charged topic. With Wolfe, I felt like he was writing about something that shocked his own sensibility. Zadie Smith is just 30 or so. She has probably used an Ipods or surfed on myspace.

If I could change something, though, I would end more like Wolfe: with a big event that brings all of the characters together in a way that forever changes everything. Here, , it is just the opposite -- earlier misdeeds wither under sunshine and with it the hopes for a good ending for Mr. Belsey.

I'm quite surprised by the negative reviews here- I found this book absolutely compulsive- its full of great dialogue, witty descriptions and is, at times, laugh out loud funny. The funniest part I remember is when Howard is at an academic dinner, and nearly wets himself because a barber-shop quartet are singing U2's In The Name of Love- in a samba style, complete with an impromptu moonwalk. That, alone, nearly had me in tears.

I notice that many of the reviews are critical of Smith's use of dialogue, and her portrayal of black Americans such as Howard's wife Kiki. Being from Britain I can't comment on this, but I personally found the dialogue snappy and convincing, and Kiki to be a warm and empathetic character (and, unlike one of the nuttier reviewers, I didnt worry about why Zadie Smith didnt elaborate on the myriad of potential medical conditions which Kiki's 250 pound weight would entail. This is fiction, after all.)

Many other reviewers complain that there is no plot. This is true, but because there is such a complex tangle of relationships throughout the book, this simply isn't an issue- in fact, it zips along beautifully. This novel isnt meant to be a fast-paced thriller- it's a study of human relationships. But it is perhaps here that the critics are on to something. For if I were to criticise On Beauty, its that the characters, while being interesting and recognisable, are rather stereotypical. Anyone who's been to university will recognise the clever but overly-eager Zora, or the hippy poetry teacher Claire. But Smith doesn't do enough to develop them. In fact, the characters fit rather too neatly into the reader's expectations. The characters Howard and Monty Kipps, exemplify this- the former a pretentious left-wing intellectual who's not much good at coping with reality, the latter a hypocritical right-wing ideologue. So far, so predictable. But Smith never really problematises this- the Kipps family in particular just weren't developed much beyond their hard-line Christian values. (Although the one exception to this is Kiki's touchingly brief friendship with Monty's wife, Carlene). This rather superficial charcaterisation is both On Beauty's strength, and its weakness. Its strength, in that it caters to its audience very well- if you're middle-class and university-educated, or have a literary inclination, you will revel in this novel's jokes about intellectuals and student life, etc. But the responses of some of the reviews posted here prove that not everyone was enamoured by Smith's potrayal of race relations, or minority ethnic groups.

When you enjoy a book as much as I enjoyed reading this one, you do ask yourself if there's something suspicious about its being too readily appealing. And I think that the criticism above accounts for that. Perhaps, in trying to deal with large, thorny issues, Smith has bitten off more than she can chew, and has skimmed the surface as a result. However, had Smith undertaken a more thorough and complex exploration of these issues, the result would have been a much weighter piece of literature, but a far less enjoyable read.

Zadie Smith's "On Beauty" is a sweeping novel chronicling the lives of two disparate academic families - the liberal-leaning Belseys and the staunchly conservative Kipps. Howard Belsey is a white professor, and Monty Kipps is a black professor; both study art and hail from the U.K. They also both married black women, but that's where the similarities end. Specifically, Howard and Monty have been waging an academic vendetta across the Atlantic. These two families start to intertwine in unexpected ways - or at least unexpected to the characters in the novel. When Monty comes to the U.S. and joins the faculty at Howard's tony liberal arts college (the fictional Wellington), sparks fly.

"On Beauty" has a bit of a hook - it's an homage to E.M. Forster's "Howards End," which is a book I really love. Primarily, the similarity between these two books rests on common motifs and a few shared plot points. Specifically, both novels explore the potentially negative consequences that can occur when well-meaning progressives become overly involved in the lives of the "less fortunate." In this case, Howard's daughter, Zora, attempts to help a talented street poet she meets. However, her munificence may be more about wanting to remold Carl in her own intellectual image rather than help him on his own terms; plus, she kind of has a crush on Carl and hopes he'll reciprocate. In addition, both novels concern class struggles, with "On Beauty" focusing especially on race.

"On Beauty" is a sprawling, messy book crammed with interesting ideas and details; unfortunately, many of its themes are not fully developed. In addition, the characters sometimes ring a bit false, and the elements relevant to "Howards End" feel a tad forced. As a result, some readers may view this book as more of an experiment than a truly great novel; I know I did at times. However, even when it falls short, it does so in an interesting way. Overall, I recommend this book, although less enthusiastically to readers who dislike books that are more than a bit self-conscious or pretentious.

On Beauty takes place in a suburb of Massachusetts and follows two families: The Belseys and The Kipps. Howard Belsey is an Art History professor at the prestigious Wellington University. His archrival Monty Kipps comes to Wellington for a year with his family as a visiting professor. Howard and Monty represent opposite ends of the spectrum: liberal and conservative, non-religious and religious, pro-Affirmative action and anti-Affirmative action and on and on. Their views are brought to life as On Beauty covers the year they share at Wellington.

On Beauty has strong character description. It tackles the various issues that professors and students of a university face as well as the issues of the home (loyalty, fidelity, marriage, parenting, etc.) While not a fast paced read this book provides a good deal of conversation starters and controversial topics. It would be a good book group read.

Words cannot express my debt gratitude and appreciation to Zadie Smith for writing "On Beauty." Smith's "On Beauty" was *the* novel that inspired me to abandon the pursuit of the PhD track in the humanities. Howard Belsey represents the person that academia encourages us to mold ourselves into - a cold, hard, judgemental, aloof intellectual caricature. And Kiki Belsey represents the warm, generous, compassionate people that get buried under all of the cold, hard theory. Recovering those people who are hidden under all of the layers of insecurity, mental illness, pretension and self-obsession, is a painstaking process that has thus far taken over one year of my life.

Smith seers the pretension of academia vis-a-vis her characterization of Dr. Belsey and the contrasting of his character with kind, caring, compassionate Kiki - who reaches out to the wife of her husband's arch nemesis despite Howard's protestations.

Anyhow, I could write an entire Michiko-Kakutani-style piece about why this novel is excellent. But the bottom line...I highly recommend this novel for anyone who has felt beaten down by the "intellectuals," who has felt pressured to change themselves to feel "smarter," more "impressive" to other people. This novel is a wonderful way to re-discover your true self.

Firstly, I was extremely impressed with Zadie Smith's first effort, 'White Teeth', though less taken with her follow up, 'The Autograph Man'.

'On Beauty' is undoubtedly a return to the form 'White Teeth'. Another epic sprawling family novel with lovely (though not overdone) writing and fascinatingly flawed characters. I particularly loved Kiki, the strong wise matriarch of the house, whose humanity is continously juxtaposed against her husband's intellect.

Unfortunately, as addicted as I was to 'On Beauty', it suffers the same problems as her earlier two novels. Namely, the pacing within the text is slightly off-centred, with almost nothing occuring within the first and last forty pages. Nothing appears to evolve quickly enough, and although I was entirely captivated, I was never sure why. I also found the African-American characters simplistic and capable of falling into the mold Smith was perhaps trying to break from. Perhaps it would have been better set in England (like 'White Teeth'), because some of phrasing has a distinctly un-American ring to it.

Similarly, the title 'On Beauty' is somewhat illogical, although I can see that Smith is essentially writing about discovering the flaws of selfhood and learning to dance with those flaws.

Despite this, an interesting read, although not as engaging as 'White Teeth.' I am looking forward to Smith reaching her full and obvious potential.

It's almost impossible to dislike Zadie Smith's writing because she's very funny and has a fine handle on character; still, there were so many strange flaws in this novel I kept commenting on them out loud with the friend with whom I was travelling while I read Smith's third novel. She seems to misunderstand entirely the way the American tenure system in private colleges works (it is impossible Howard Belsey would have the institutional authority and privileges he has and yet be untenured), and she also seems to have done little research on things as simple as American labor laws (a major subplot about one of the characters being forced to work by a megastore on Christmas Day is another impossibility in the US). And her re-working of many of the basic plot points of Forster's HOWARDS END are simply unnecessary, and force Smith to create all kinds of plot contrivances to allow the truth of Mrs. KIpps's bequest to come to light. The novel is most valuable as a study in character, and here Smith does not fail to delight: the characters of Howard, Kiki, and Zora Belsey are so funny and finely drawn that even with all the errors and elaborate plotting coincidences I've still recommended this book to others already. Yet it is a bit of a puzzle why by her third novel Smith should be making such elementary errors in her plotting research.

This is an engaging novel of large scope, and with well-defined, vivid yet believable distinct characters. The writing is deft and mordant, without tipping into hilarity. A tale of tensions between and within two academic families, it revolves around Kiki, the wife and earth-mother figure of the Belsey family. Her feckless husband Howard betrays her and their children in myriad ways yet remains likable in a pathetic way, an object finally of pity as much as censure. I "read" this as an audiobook, ably narrated by Peter Francis James, whose deft handling of the many voices resolves the criticisms of reviewers as to Smith's treatment of dialects.

A flawed but lyrical and energetic novel. Zadie Smith clearly has the ability to invent and then to describe compelling and vivid characters: Kiki and Howard Belsey; their three children Jerome, Zora, and young Levi; Montague and Carlene Kipps, and their offspring the gorgeous Victoria ("Vee") and the stiff and judgmental Michael; even a sudden ingenue, one Katie Armstrong, 16 and from South Bend, IN, whose feelings of bewilderment at post-structuralism intrude briefly on the center of the book. Then poor Katie just as suddenly disappears from the book, never to be heard of or from again. Her vanishing act is emblematic of the problem with this book: its fundamental lack of coherence and staying power. The only character who spans the entire novel is the bountiful Kiki. The others slip in and out when Smith needs them to make one point or another. As the book starts to flag, which it does, she desperately engages the characters in increasingly desperate activities, bringing the book to a crisis in the final chapters that she seems to have no plan in hand to resolve.

Another reader who suggested that a good editor was needed here certainly has it right. Zadie Smith is a talented young writer, but she is not well served by a reputation that exempts her from the kind of editorial scrutiny that would have been required to make this into the great book that it could have been. I found the wit, the author's descriptive power, and the charisma of the world she populates to be sufficient to keep me engaged in the novel. It doesn't, however, realize its potential.

Zadie Smith, a London writer, first came to fame with her debut novel, `White Teeth'. While slightly over hyped, White Teeth was a great novel. It was basically about modern London life, seen through three very different families. It was a great mess of a novel that worked like an early Dickens' novel in its ambition to take a bite of modern London life; full of memorable caricatures, great story lines, hysterical dialogue and a lyrical and hilarious prose.
Her third novel is `On beauty.' The novel takes place in a Massachusetts college town. The story is about two families: the Kipps and Belseys; but mostly about the Belseys. First up is Howard, a liberal art history professor. Then, there is his wife, Kiki. She is a nurse, and proudly not an intellectual, in the worst sense of the word. In her early years she was very beautiful, but has ballooned up to 250 lbs. Then the kids: Zora, a college student and ultimate daddy's little girl, Jerome, a conservative virginal (to Howard's despair) college student, Levi a home boy from the burbs, down with all things hip-hop.
As the novel opens Jerome is living in London for the summer in the house of Monty Kipps, a conservative professor, and Howard's enemy. Back at home Howard is at the dog house for having cheated on Kiki. After a short tumultuous sexual encounter between Jerome and Victoria, one of the Kipps's daughter, Monty Kipps accepts a job in the college where Howard teaches and moves down the street from the Belseys.
The plot is of course `borrowed' from Forster's "Howards End.' Ms. Smith says this is a tribute to the author whom she says, `all my fiction is indebted.' This is the novels first problem. From the opening line, `One may as well begin with Jerome's e-mail to his father,' to a lengthy description and history to the Belsey's residence, to the structure of the story, Ms. Smith tries to echo Mr. Forster's novel. The first problem with these attempts is the plot, which at various point Ms. Smith has to yank into the narrow structure she has set for self. As a result the plot is a mess, without any of the `White Teeth' ambitions. Another problem is the characters. Most of them are here standing in for the characters from the original story, as a result they are lifeless caricature and are pushed aside almost immediately after Ms. Smith has nodded at the original story.
The second problem with the novel is the setting. She wrote the novel after her short stay in Cambridge. It shows. She has trouble with small everyday costumes: Kiki sends her nineteen years old son to buy alcohol; and most noticeably with the dialogues. Levi, whom she attempts to portrays as a suburb kid speaking in a hip hop lingo , sounds like a lovely English lady trying to speak in a hip hop lingo: `You know ... I just thought I'd pay you a call'
Yet, in some ways this is also the best novel Zadie Smith has written. Her prose is a lot more controlled than in her previous novels, but still lyrical and funny. More importantly she has created Kiki Belsey. Kiki Belsey is by far her most complex and detailed character. She is perhaps the only character without any intellectual ambition, and is perhaps (coincidentally?) the most normal. She is a mother worried about her kids, a woman dealing with aging and a failed marriage. In a way she is a simple character, that holds all the characters together. Towards the end of the novel she cleaning out the basement and observes, `The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.'
I finished this novel with a mixed felling. Here is a flawed novel, from a tremendous talent, who has still to write her GREAT NOVEL.

I first spotted this book when it was released in hardcover and was excited about it. I LOVED her novel White Teeth and was impressed by the glowing reviews of On Beauty. Once it came out in paperback, I scooped it up. My first impression was not a good one. The dialouge in the beginning was flat, boring and often times confusing. But I trudged on, hoping that it would be another Zadie Smith gem. It never got any better. The characters were dull, annoying and stereotypical. The plotline was never interesting. All in all, i was very disapointed. Zadie Smith is usually a brilliant writer and that is the only reason I forced myself to make it through the book, months later. A good book usually takes me about 3 days. If you haven't read White Teeth, get that instead. White Teeth: A Novel

I have read Zadie Smith's novel "White Teeth" and I enjoyed it very much, so when my copy "On Beauty" arrived I was expecting another story with memorable characters, a great plot and a super ending. But, alas I was disappointed. I didn't feel it was a terrible book, nor a super book, but rather a good, interesting read. In other words, I'd like to think I got my monies worth, but I'm not sure. Maybe I'll read it again.

The story revolves around two families that live in Mass. The reader will find the Belseys family with the main character Howard Belsey an Art professor and from the second family; the Kipps there is Monty Kipps. Monty arrives with his family and begins his work at the same university that Howard is employed. In summary these two characters lock horns on various social issues (family life, marriage, faithfulness, etc.) and their strong views are covered in this story that spans over a one year period. I suspect that so far this sounds boring, but the author did weave this subplot (I say subplot because there seemed to be numerous plots where I'm in the middle or I'm just starting another one) into the story to make it very interesting.

I use the word "interesting" loosely because I found it difficult to find a lot of empathy for the host of characters, although Zora with her sexual problems did stand out in my memory.

The ending was a let down for me. It left me sort of confused, as if there were more pages to the story that needed to be read. Maybe that was intentional by the author. Overall I'm not sure if I would recommend "On Beauty" to my friends. I guess I would have to be very selective if I did opt to encourage someone to buy the book. Maybe, my best bet would be to advise them to check it out at the library.

Fans of the BBC soap "EastEnders" will recognize the way Zadie Smith has constructed this wonderful send-up of academic life. Here are the closely interwoven lives of people related by blood, lust, and a too-tightly knit community. Here also are the racially mixed families, the full-blown sibling disputes, the marital infidelities, the class divisions, high-volume generational conflicts, the festering animosities, and the seldom acknowledged but visible contrast between the good-looking and the plainly unattractive. Meanwhile, there are uncounted threads of plot lines as we cut from one character to the next and learn the secrets they are keeping from each other, secrets that will eventually have their day of revelation.

Layered over all this melodrama is a brilliant comedy of manners that is often laugh-out-loud hilarious. Smith occasionally dips below the surface of her characters to reveal their self-awareness, but most of the time her scenes are about what happens when people are talking to each other. With her fine-tuned ear to the varieties of speech, Smith uses wildly different ways of using language to represent collisions of personalities. And she invariably sets her characters on a collision course with each other.

This is a hugely entertaining novel and a refreshing departure from more sober-sided and politically correct portrayals of "diversity." The novel has some ideas on that subject, but they're not very big ones. Readers should just settle back and let themselves get lost in the fun house.

Fans of the BBC soap "EastEnders" will recognize the way Zadie Smith has constructed this wonderful send-up of academic life. Here are the closely interwoven lives of people related by blood, lust, and a too-tightly knit community. Here also are the racially mixed families, the full-blown sibling disputes, the marital infidelities, the class divisions, high-volume generational conflicts, the festering animosities, and the seldom acknowledged but visible contrast between the good-looking and the plainly unattractive. Meanwhile, there are uncounted threads of plot lines as we cut from one character to the next and learn the secrets they are keeping from each other, secrets that will eventually have their day of revelation.

Layered over all this melodrama is a brilliant comedy of manners that is often laugh-out-loud hilarious. Smith occasionally dips below the surface of her characters to reveal their self-awareness, but most of the time her scenes are about what happens when people are talking to each other. With her fine-tuned ear to the varieties of speech, Smith uses wildly different ways of using language to represent collisions of personalities. And she invariably sets her characters on a collision course with each other.

This is a hugely entertaining novel and a refreshing departure from more sober-sided and politically correct portrayals of "diversity." The novel has some ideas on that subject, but they're not very big ones. Readers should just settle back and let themselves get lost in the fun house.

Zadie Smith brought me back around to being a fan of her writing with this book. I loved White Teeth, but was disappointed with The Autograph Man in all kinds of ways (though her writing ability is evident in anything she writes). On Beauty is a return to the insightful, panoramic vision of White Teeth. A large cast of characters handled deftly, and each one of them intimately rendered. I wouldn't say this novel has a plot so much as many incidents that eventually arrive at an amazing conclusion. Smith is a very English author (the novel is a spin off of an E.M. Forster novel), and it comes through in this book, even though she takes on American characters as well as English characters in this book, and spends a lot of time in American settings. Because of this, she's able to create American characters that feel almost more authentic than many American writers have rendered. Looking from the outside in has provided her with a fresh perspective. Recommended for readers who like a side of characters with their characters.

I really struggled with whether to give this book two stars or three. Zadie Smith's writing is so superb that for a time I tilted toward the higher rating.

But I opted for two because of so many glaring weaknesses: missing are plot, storyline, character development, tension and a realistic understanding about race in America.

Mostly I found that I didn't care about anyone in the book. I wasn't curious to know them better or, really cared what would happen.

And I also think she really should stick to writing what she knows--and that is NOT race in America. It's not even race and immigrants in America. She hits so many false notes that they ruined the beautiful music of her writing.

For example, when I ask myself what distinguishes Kiki as "black" my only answer is her stereotypical obesity. (And yes, statistically, most African American women are obese). She looks like a mammy. Otherwise, for most of the book, she is strangely devoid of culture, beliefs, history, family, friends, politics--you name it.

But no mother of black sons, whether she lives in a city or a suburb, can afford to act as if color does not matter--not in America. We have a violence here that permeates everything. Often it is black on black violence. But nonetheless our violence devours young black men. Mothers here (and father's too) are vigilant about the minutiae of their son's lives--the size, style and color of things like t-shirts, baseball caps and blue jeans.

And the mother of a black boy who doesn't come home at night doesn't talk like Kiki does in this book--like a white mother--about how she's not his "jailer" and oh well, she just doesn't know what to do. No, the mother of a black boy wonders if he's dead.

And were Howard a recent immigrant I would understand his ignorance, but no one who has lived here for any length of time would fail to understand and be terrified for their sons. Were this a deeper book, that fear could have been used as one of the more obvious reasons Howard has a fling with a white woman--it could be an expression of his wish to escape, if briefly, the tremendous difficulties that come with having to worry incessantly about blackness--something that was probably foreign to him for much of his life.

I have always been a sucker for academic novels, and (though I liked _Moo_) this is the first academic satire I've read that comes up to the standards set by David Lodge's _Trading Places_. The criticism other reviewers make of Smith's handling of dialect may be correct, but her ability to capture academic discourse is excellent, and her parody of deconstructionist dialogue in Professor Belsey's class (a scene that comes right at the centre of the book) is dead on. More generally Smith's take on the mixture of and confusion between beauty as aesthetics and beauty as an object of (or source of) desire (particularly sexual desire) was fascinating. And the openness of the question with which this novel ends, which is the difficulty of understanding how love survives though beauty does not, makes it poignant. (Now I need to read _Straight Man_ ...)

Zadie Smith's third novel, "On Beauty", touted unashamedly as a rewrite of E M Forster's "Howard's End", succeeds on a level, which in lesser hands would not have been thought possible. Avoiding by a mile a verdict of misadventure which would have greeted such a seemingly foolishly brave venture, Smith brings us bang up-to-date in contemplating contemporary truths behind the famous "only connect" line from Forster's original novel by examining class and race divisions, political ideology and religion, the role of art and above all, universal human concerns and values in modern society.

The liberal Belseys and conservative Kipps, two families from opposites sides of the track, cross paths and swords when their contrasting social values and beliefs collide as soon as the Kipps relocate from London to Massachusetts. Howard and Monty, heads of their respective clans and both Rembrandt scholars, are poised for a dangerous showdown that could cost them their academic reputation and careers. Ironically, the flash-in-the pan romance between Jerome and Victoria in London, rather than accentuating the rift between the two families, in fact provides the perfect excuse for Kiki to reach out to Carlene, thereby forging an unlikely friendship between the two older women that would form the moral center of the novel. There is a secondary plotline focusing on Carl, a member of the modern underclass, his accidental relationship with the idealistic Zora and his seduction by the heartless Victoria, which brings the conflict to a climax.

But strip away the ideological façade and you will find the Belseys and the Kipps looking uncomfortably like each other. For all their puffed up conservatism and pro-establishment values, the worm at the heart of the Kipps family proves just as pernicious as the dysfunctional badge the Belseys wear on their sleeves. Howard's philandering, his undisguised disconnect with his family, etc, reveal the hollowness at the center of his agnostic secularism - Howard Belsey proudly declares they don't celebrate Christmas. In daring to subject the fractures and fissures of modern life to microscopic scrutiny, Smith has given us characters that don't endear themselves to us. Apart from Kiki and Carlene - earth mother and realist respectively - the other clan members are by turns pathetic (Howard), smug (Monty), repugnant (Victoria) or else surprisingly underwritten (Jerome and Michael).

Smith's prose is wonderful and never less than compelling. The plot moves a tad slowly at first but picks up in the final third and best written part of the novel. The dialogue isn't always smooth - Levi's and Carl's street talk sound forced and awkward - and we could have done without all the gratituous sex. It just leaves a nasty aftertaste.

Despite its flaws, "On Beauty" makes for a totally absorbing read and is one of the best novels I've read last year. Highly recommended.

On Beauty made me remember why I loved Zadie Smith so much.

On Beauty begins with an introduction to Howard Belsey, a middle-aged Englishman living in a wealth suburb of Boston. Howard teaches Art History at a college that reminded me of <a href = "[...]">Wellesley</a>, with the exceptions that Wellesley is not co-ed and Wellington, the fictional equivalent is. Howard is introduced to us at a time in his life when most people would consider him struggling - he is a Rembrandt scholar that does not have tenure, cannot finish his book and has recently been caught in an adulterous affair with he and his wife, Kiki's, best friend.

Kiki and Howard have three children - Jerome, Levi and Zora. The three children have their own issues to overcome. Jerome is completely disgusted by his father's behavior and becomes a devout Christian in order to come to terms with that behavior. Zora, a sophomore at Wellington, is a feminist who is trying to set herself apart from the legacy or lack of it that her father has at Wellington. Levi becomes enmeshed with urban, hip-hop and Haitian culture in an effort to distance himself from his family's upscale lifestyle.

These players are pitted against the Kipps family, their opposites in every way, shape and form.

I loved how Ms. Smith deftly intertwined all of the characters in this novel and developed them. From start to finish, you could see how the characters morphed and changed and learned. It was amazing. At the same time, she raises issues of economic class, race and gender as well as family relationships, marriage and friendship. There were some parts that I skimmed and could do without. I did not like Levi a lot of the time - I thought that he whined a lot and it got old after a while. There were also some parts of the novel that dealt with analysis of art that I did not enjoy in part because I did not know the piece that was being discussed and had no frame of reference. However, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel...and would highly recommend it to anyone out there.

Sometimes we read books simply to enjoy the feeling of recognition -- of ourselves, of the "types" of people we've encountered, of the world around us. For me, On Beauty was that kind of book. Not the kind of novel that will change my life or take me to new places, and not "Important Literature" that will be read generations from now, but a story that presents me with characters and situations, cleverly and carefully evoked, that I find delightfully and sometimes disturbingly familiar.

This being said, it makes sense that the book wouldn't have universal appeal. I live in Boston and I went to a college very much like Wellington. So I can relate to many of the scenarios and characters (and I mean that in the sense of saying "that guy's a real character"). For me, reading the book was like looking through old yearbooks or photo albums. The pleasure of it was akin to watching a well-written but not particularly deep TV show, like Six Feet Under, or Sex & the City.

My major beef with the book was the dialogue. I second the reviewer who commented on Smith's tin ear for American speech. Where were her American editors? An American--even one with a British father, I'd think--would never say "You were meant to be here," but "You were supposed to be here." Jerome would call his emails "emails," not "mails." And Levi would certainly not "pay a call" to his friend in Roxbury. It's incredible that no one made the necessary edits, for the American printing if nothing else.

For its first 200 pages, 'On Beauty' lacks clear momentum. The characters aren't yet in sharp focus and the reader - this reader at least - is uncertain of where the plot is heading. Once the story begins to come together, however, it takes off with a bang, rewarding the patient reader with plot-lines that neatly (but unpredictably) interweave and characters that are fully realized and sympathetic, despite their flaws. Smith's send-up of the vacuousness of modern academia is spot-on, and the pain her characters cause each other and themselves really resonates. The ending of the novel is simultaneously ambiguous and satisfying - as in life, some characters are left happily and others less so.

I would recommend 'On Beauty,' but it requires a willingness to plod through the first sections.

This author's main asset is in her descriptions and nuances. Many of them were simply terrific.I did also detect some humour, which was pleasing. The start of the novel with Jerome's emails to his father, although not a big attention grabber, is unique.

However, for me the story was much too slow moving.There was too much detail and what I consider filler throughout the novel. Even in the midst of a very good fight between Kiki and Howard (204), the author sidetracks with the elastic of Kiki's underwear and Howard placing his hands on the sideboard,thus losing the momentum.

I disliked the clumsy way the reader is told to jump nine months forward and back across the Atlantic (42).

That weird poem "On Beauty"...what did it say? (153).

Not bad but would I recommend it? Sorry....

Like many of the other reviewers, there were times during this longish book that I wondered what the hype about it was. Interesting, yes; humorous, certainly. But I wasn't entirely sure what the direction was-until the very end. And the last 3 pages explains the entire trajectory and raison d'etre (sorry for the bad spelling) of the book. And ultimately, reading this book was a worthwhile endeavor.

This book is about how everyone sees other people through blinders and through the prism of our beliefs and ideals--nothing too startling there--but then the book goes on to examine what happens when those blinders are or are not removed. It's much easier to live a life in which one interacts with simplified 'types.' But life isn't that simple, and it is much richer when one learns acceptance of all the flaws and complexities within oneself and within others, that is, if one is developmentally ready to do so. One of the strengths of the book is the recognition that because various characters are different ages, their ability to adapt, change and accept are different. The author has a good ear for the voices (literal and figurative) of her characters at all their various life stages.

I also enjoyed this book because I am a recovering academic. In turn, perhaps because of this, in contrast to some of the other reviewers, I found the picture presented of academic life to be quite accurate. Take, for example, the Chair of the African-American Studies Dept. He is pleasant, bright, engaging, somewhat flawed in his personal life, and dispenses professional problems--including problem-people--by re-directing them in the extreme. (I'm not being specific here because to do so would ruin some parts of the book.) Having known a number of department chairs, the fictional character was far less unpleasant than the reality, but the principles rang true. Similarly, there are other academically-based characters who are variously exploitive, overwhelmingly self involved, or who have made careers of wielding a certain ideology, all of whom are well represented in universities throughout the US. I can well believe that Smith wrote this while at Harvard or any other liberal arts institution.

Zadie Smith's excellent third novel, On Beauty, limns the tale of a thoroughly modern family beset by issues of trust, adultery, race and class in a New England academic town.

Howard and Kiki Belsey (he Caucasian and English, she black and from small-town Florida) have forged a decades-long and mostly-successful marriage that has produced three children. On Beauty follows the family through a troubled passage both in Howard and Kiki's marriage and in Howard's university career that raises questions about honesty (both marital and otherwise), fidelity, racial identity and politics.

While Smith revisits some of the questions addressed in her first novel, the wonderful White Teeth, the tone of the two novels varies markedly. Where White Teeth was allegorical, On Beauty is more intimate and its central characters more finely drawn. The depiction of Kiki, a middle-aged woman caught between the needs of her children, her husband and herself, is especially moving and generous.

On Beauty is highly recommended as a beautifully written and absorbing novel of family relationships, with welcome comedic turns. For those who wondered whether Smith could produce a second novel of the caliber of her acclaimed White Teeth debut, the answer is decidedly yes. Even better, the two novels are sufficiently different so as to diminish disparaging side by side comparisons of either. What can be said is the Zadie Smith is a major new literary talent who deserves the praise that readers and critics are bestowing on her.

After reading White Teeth, I was thrilled to pick up another Zadie Smith book, "on Beauty." Although I do not like "On Beauty" as much as "White Teeth," I believe it is a worthwhile read. Once again, I feel that Smith masterfully presents us with REAL people. These people aren't all good or all bad. They are REAL, and for that, I love Zadie Smith's writing. One thing I loved about White Teeth was the deep cultural messages and although "On Beauty" contained similar messages, it wasn't as profound. I was disappointed as I looked for deeper meanings into the characters and their motives and felt that Zadie Smith could have made a stronger effort to discuss the interracial marriage between Howard and Kiki and their children's own struggles for their identity in a rich white neighborhood. The two older children do not seem to think much about their personal idenity, at least in regards to race, and the only character who does is the youngest son, Levi, who tries desperately to be "street."

This book took a very pessimistic view of marriage and discussed affairs and divorce as if marriage has, like batteries, only a certain amount of "life" to it before it all goes to hell. I appreciated that the pain of affairs was clearly shown in all characters, including the wayward husband. The affairs the wayward husband has were so pointless and ruined his marriage and almost ruined his career. You find yourself so angry at the man! I was pissed because I was like, "Dude, you should have at least SOME rationale for having an affair beyond middle age boredom and lust!" Yet, the anger I feel toward this character simply testifies to Smith's ability to bring her characters alive and bring you into the story. It is truly masterful writing. The story is depressing but I couldn't NOT finish it. Each character is so complex, beautifully described, and beautifully developed. And although things go from bad to worse...you have to follow it through to the end. Throughout it all, you HOPE for the characters and I think that is the most powerful element of Smith's writing.

I grant that Zadie Smith can write an evocative scene, or describe a setting well. But this skill does not an engaging story make.

On Beauty sets out to examine the issues which divide men and women, parents and children, husbands and wives, Old World (UK) and New World (US), and academe and reality. Given the huge number of books which have tackled all or some of these subjects already, a great onus is placed upon the author to deliver a unique insight or two, and here Smith fails.

Perhaps Smith could learn from her brilliant contemporary, Kate Atkinson, who can pull an engaging plot and lovely prose together while engaing us intellectually.

Smith also incorporates some of her poet-husband's work in this book, which I found a tad precious. As well as a crude attempt to boost his sales.

I keep reading rave reviews of Smith's work, so I keep reading her books, but this may be the last. Somehow I am missing whatever the raves are about.

Zadie Smith has a nice ear for dialogue, especially when the young fend off their parents or when her characters quarrel. Scenes are sometimes funny and, on one or two occasions, moving. She is good on immature students, on faculty rivalries and on fashionable political issues on American university campuses. Her main characters are mostly well drawn, though one of them surely descends into caricature when she has him lecture on art in meaningless post-structuralist jargon; and the way in which most of his students respond in the same jargon is frankly unbelievable: that sort of lecturer would never keep a class. (Incidentally, the title of the book led me to think that issues about art and poetry would be much more central than they actually are. The poem, On Beauty, which is quoted on p.153, is presumably supposed to be a clue to much else in the book, but I couldn't make head or tail of it.)

I think the novel is not tightly enough constructed. In the first half there are several scenes whose purpose in the overall scheme eluded me, and at that stage it was hardly a page-turner for me: I was not eager to find out what happened next. But in its last quarter the book gathers momentum, and the ending is terrific.

I felt exhausted by "White Teeth" and could barely bring myself to finish it, but when I saw the sale price here on the store, I thought I'd give Zadie another go; I'm halfway through the novel now, and I've got another howling headache. I recognize her gifts, of course, but what I don't understand is her lack of discipline and craft. She seems very young, still, to me; every possible idea sprouting in her brain is deemed worthy of putting down on paper. She mentions in a forward that if it wasn't for her editor, this would be longer and 'worse'. I wish the editor had been more strict (and also that they had employed a halfway decent proofreader -- there are a multitude of typos in the book, shocking). Was it necessary to include Zadie's husband's poem (also titled 'On Beauty') in here? It's all so indulgent. Much has been said about her attempts at imitating American modes of speech -- this is the exhausting part. So many character types, each speaking in their own vernacular, but in very cliched ways, and THEY NEVER STOP TALKING. This is one of the talkiest books I've ever read, and what makes that challenging is that no one seems to have anything worthwhile to say. Another complaint, while I'm at it -- Kiki, the matriarch, is referred to as a nurse, but halfway through the book she still has yet to be seen doing anything nurse-like, no work, nothing. She doesn't even relate to an obviously ailing woman in a nurse-like way -- an arbitrary choice by the author, apparently, and then forgotten. I think this is the character Zadie missed by the longest shot, and the more she writes, the farther from a genuine character she gets. There is no real story here, that I can see. Indulgent, immature writing. I may not finish it.