Thalia Book Club: On Beauty with Author Zadie Smith

Dysfunctional families - with education (I originally had the word intelligence in the first few words but I think not). I don't think I would have finished it - if not for my book discussion group lol.

Some strong women characters- I think that's what kept the story going. One wins, one dies and others just exist.

Why 2 stars? - I can't choose one star - "I didn't like it" because I did slog through it.. so maybe one and a half would be a better representation of my feelings for the book.

I slowly came to like this book. The characters gradually grew on me, at least those I felt sympathy for. An interesting story of a family in an almost critical state and how they deal with themselves and their outside influences. I could not tune in to Howard or Victoria at all however. An interesting book, looking at different types of beauty. Glad I've read it.

One of the best things I read in the past year. Extremely well written, funny, touching - Zadie Smith covers it all.

another reviewer said it best "was not invested in any of these characters or their various crises" I'm 80% finished and ready to be done. Interesting and OK, but not a classic. Trails off at the end

I listened to this one first as I was painting the living room on Duffus Street. I liked it so much, I read it within the year. It's a wonderful novel. For me the most compelling aspect was how the young characters dealt with the roles their appearance gave them. How does a boy who is raised middleclass in a mixed race marriage cobble together a recognizable identity? How does a very beautiful young person cope with the attention beauty gets them? The characters are rich with contradictions and the ordinary randomness of human behaviour and the consequences of those behaviours. I love this novel.

I selected this for my bookclub. I was a bit bored with it. Characters were semi-interesting, however, just didn't grab me.

This novel is illuminated throughout with glorious, deep, sparkling prose, but I didn't "like the tomato." Most of the characters were unlikable and the plot somewhat unbelievable. What was supposed to be a satire of academia just seemed ridiculous in places; it's a stretch of the imagination to believe that a professor could get an archivist's position created just to placate an unqualified undergraduate who might make trouble, and that the university would both approve such a thing and let an undergrad fill it without doing a search for, oh, I don't know, somebody with at least a master's in library and information science. For all of the focus on race and social justice in the book, I found it disappointing that a plus-size character, one of the only sympathetic ones in the story, was so often reduced to her size. The rambling details of the plot also took far too long to relate to each other. This is the kind of work you read if you want to study writing, but not necessarily if you want to enjoy it.

I'd rather give it four and a half stars. Smith had me really invested in the characters, I loved the university backdrop, and the prose was at times stunning. And I feel like it has actually taught me something of the beauty of marriage, and of the tragedy of betrayal. I don't know though, something just stopped me from love loving it. Maybe it just isn't the sort of book I give five stars. Sorry Zadie.

One of the best things I read in the past year. Extremely well written, funny, touching - Zadie Smith covers it all.

Love her spirit and intelligence. Made me want to read her books, I admit I haven't read any yet.

Love Zadie Smith's writing, especially as this novel was in a familiar setting (Wellesley). The Virgin Megastore! Really loved Kiki, Howard's wife. The story was so-so, infidelity on college campuses... Inner city kids not feeling at home on said campuses. But she writes like a dream.

It took me a while to get into this book but I found the middle engaging and I loved the writting style. The end however was a bit like watching a car crash happen in slow motion as various characters destroyed their lives through bad decisions. I just didn't enjoy watching it all fall apart and I was left with a feeling of emptiness after reading. I'm glad I read to the end, but not a book I would reread.

From the moment I started this book, I could not figure it out. Is it brilliant? Or is it just very, very good? I still don't know, but I think it might be the former. I loved the characterizations. Smith presents a wide array of people with vastly differing points of view, not afraid to apply a critical eye to any of them. The plot was so wonderfully convoluted that it would be nearly impossible for me to explain the web of relationships, betrayals, and conquests to anyone without a few hours to spare. But it was not just the shock and amazement that kept me reading. It wasn't just that I wanted to know how this all ended. This one engaged me intellectually. More often than not, the books I deem important fuck with my emotions. While my proverbial heart remained largely untouched (for everyone but Kiki and Zora), my head was spinning with new thought, ideas, and points of view that I had never considered, let alone entertained.This is one of those contemporary books (along with Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer and The Coma by Alex Garland) that I consider to be almost too phenomenal to have been penned by human hands.

A wonderful novel based on EM Forster's Howard's End. We have an American campus setting and two sparring families. Zadie Smith keeps her readers enthralled and entertained for the full four-hundred and fifty pages of the novel. A super read although quite a feminist tract - all the male characters being deeply flawed, weak and unlikeable, irrespective of their left or right-wing leanings, in contrast to the women who were controlling and powerful. Still, no bad thing, I am a believer in positive discrimination.

Engrossing family tale (not as good as White Teeth) but a great climax and denouement.

This novel tells the story of two families of vastly different ideologies. The Belsey family lives in a university town near Boston. Howard Belsey is a British art history professor married to Kiki, an African American woman. They have been married thirty years and have three children aged sixteen to mid-twenties. Monty Kipps, another academic, lives in London with his wife, Carlene, and their two college age children. The Belsey family is intensely progressive. The Kipps family is ultra-conservative. Howard Belsey and Monty Kipps have been adversaries for many years.

There are a large number of characters and it takes a while for the numerous storylines to come together. It is written in third person from a number of perspectives with no single protagonist. It is a blend of diverse voices, representing race, social class, politics, and relationships. Art, music, poetry (including rap), and physical beauty are integral to the plot. These play into the narrative of aesthetics – how the characters view themselves and each other.

I recommend reading this book slowly – it is not one to be rushed. I very much enjoy Smith's witty and insightful storytelling style. I can also recommend White Teeth.

Given how great [WHITE TEETH] is, I was really looking forward to [On Beauty].The characters tried too hard to be characters and there were none to connect to,while the plot was simply mostly boring, with some finely tuned descriptions of nature woven in.

This is just people being mean to each other, without any benefit to themselves or the reader. Cambridge and Boston didn't feel real, though they were supposed to be gritty, I guess. England felt like a far more real place in the few chapters set there.

Occasionally, the gears and levers showed. In the first paragraph of one chapter, I knew the new character was a throwaway, and sure enough, she disappeared in the next chapter.

If you want to watch people make mistakes and not learn, maybe this is for you.

Definitely witty, but not really lovable. This spot-on satire of the world of universities and academia is laugh-out-loud funny. However, I found most of the characters unlikable, and any attempts to make them relatable - Zora's unrequited crush, for example - just made them seem pathetic. I know that this book is an homage to Howards End, and some scenes are pretty much lifted from the original, but I think it ultimately failed to deliver Forster's message of "Only connect."

Zadie Smith is a gifted writer. This novel has very rich characters in Kiki, a large black woman, married to Howard, white art history professor. They have 3 children, Jerome, Zoor, Levi and live in a upper middle class suburb of Boston. Zadie Smith can equally describe what it is like to be an adolescent, a middle age white academic and a would be gangsta! This novel deals with race issues from all family members point of view. It deals with infidelity in marriage and crisis of youth. A beautifully written novel

I finally got around to reading Zadie Smith's On Beauty, a book I have had on the TBR shelf for years. The novel focuses on the Belsey family:- Howard, a 57-year old art historian and critic at Wellington University (fictional uni in a fictional town near Boston)- his wife Kiki. a notably large (mentioned often) African-American who gave up her dream of becoming a nurse to support her husband and raise their children- Jerome, the eldest son, a student at Brown University and recent convert to Christianity- Zora, a sophomore at Wellington, who is smart, competitive, and becoming socially aware- Levi, the youngest. a rap afficiando whose has adopted the speech, mannerisms and ideas more in tune with the Bronx than his upper middle class backgroundThe Belseys are reeling from several recent events. First, Howard was caught having an affair with a colleague who also happened to be a good family friend. He is doing his best--if not exactly everything he could--to earn Kiki's forgiveness, and she is trying to do her best to forgive him. Jerome is recovering from an unrequited love affair with Victoria Kipps, the beautiful daughter of his father's detested rival, Monty Kipps, a black conservative who has made a name for himself attacking affirmative action (and who also wrote a devastating critique of Howard's theories about Rembrandt). Levi is trying to find his own identity and has fallen in with a suspicious group of friends. As for Zora, she has taken on the cause of unregistered minority students from the community who have been allowed to attend classes at the individual professor's discretion. When the Kipps family moves into the neighborhood and Monty is hired by Wellington's Black Studies department, the Belseys, world is thrown into even more chaos.In On Beauty, Smith explodes hypocrisy from all sides of the social, racial, class and political spectrum, and does it with both humor and empathy. The novel is supposedly a riff on E. M. Forster's Howard's End, but since I haven't read that one in years, I can't comment on the connection.

I enjoyed Ms Smith's White Teeth, but dont recollect being so blown away as I was by this novel!The characterization is absolutely superb, as two dysfunctional academic families, whose fathers work in the Black Studies department come into repeated and various contact.Self centred, unfaithful Howard Belsey already has a feud- politically and professionally-with Monty Kipps. When Belsey's son goes to work for Kipps- and starts a short lived but intense affair with the Kipps daughter, tensions rise. Meanwhile the two wives have become friends; and Belsey's student daughter has signed up for a class taught by her father's ex-lover...Literary, entirely believable and utterly outstanding. One of the year's top reads, I think.

This is a refashioning of E.M. Forster's Howard's End, and it is incisive and brainy in both premise and execution. As an academic, I greatly enjoyed the satirical treatment of the culture wars and values that wage on our intellectual stages. Everyone is unlikeable, which is the point, in my view. I suspect that your enjoyment of this book will vary with your enjoyment of literary fiction, but no one can deny that Zadie Smith is one of the great novelists of the 21st century.

My favorite Zadie Smith book.

 I don't know that to make of this. It starts out, seems to get lost and never seems to get to a point where it feels like it has finished. I'm just not sure I get it.

"The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free."The plot of this novel centres on an academic rivalry between two families, the Belseys and the Kippses. Howard Belsey and Monty Kipps are both Rembrandt scholars despite Howard hating the artist and has dedicated his life trying to disprove that Rembrandt was a "genius". Howard is a English white professor who has spent 10 years without gaining tenure at the fictional Wellington University just outside of Boston. He is about to celebrate 30 years of marriage to Kiki, a 250lb black African American hospital administrator and have three college/university aged children. Howard is an intellectual liberal and an atheist. In contrast Monty Kipps is a black populist academic who is conservative and Christian. Most of the animosity between the two has taken place trans-Atlantic but when Monty arrives at Wellington with his family as a visiting professor their paths are sure to cross.The book opens with e-mails to Howard's from his eldest son Jerome who is working as an intern in London for Monty where he also falls in love and loses his virginity to the latter's daughter but when Howard blunders into the relationship Jerome is sent packing. In contrast the two wives form an unlikely friendship. However the central element of this book is whether or not Kiki will divorce Howard, who has recently had an affair with a work colleague. Before the affair came to light Kiki had regarded Howard as being her best friend so the unexpected friendship with Monty's wife,Carlene, comes as a welcome boom to her. Like their husbands, they are opposites politically and spiritually but come to realise that they also have things in common. They are both black non-academics in a largely white, elite neighbourhood, with children of similar ages and as their friendship grows it becomes one based on shared values rather that social expediency unlike most similar relationships within this novel. As you would expect the reader’s sympathy quickly lies with Kiki, who comes across as more open and generous who unlike her husband appreciates beauty — whether in people, art or nature simply for the pleasure that it gives. Kiki is therefore becomes the emotional heart of a novel where many of the other characters are portrayed as preoccupied and often selfish.Beauty is whether in art or nature is as the title suggests an important theme of this book but is far from being the only one. Race, religion, friendship, feminism, illness and death, family and love also feature heavily. However what is really important is the difference between the beauty on the outside as compared with that which is within. Howard and Monty are obsessed with paintings looking for flaws or the artist's motivation/ viewpoint for them but are incapable of seeing what is happening right in front of them. Zora, Howard's daughter, is seen as forthright and determined but this is just show as inside she is nervous and feels friendless. In contrast Vee, Monty's daughter, is gorgeous on the outside but is pretty shallow on the inside and misinterprets sex with desire whilst Levi, Howard's youngest son, looks for affinity with a group of Haitians despite having never visited the country.There is a certain humour in the prose but it just doesn't last for me. I found the final quarter of this book disappointing and that it ultimately tended to slip into some tired old cliches meaning that I felt that it rather let the remainder down. The reader was also left with far too many loose ends. An OK read but also at times somewhat overblown, a missed opportunity that could have been improved with a little prudent editing.

Smith looks at the lives of two professors' families in a small New England town and the people around them. This book is loosely based on E.M. Forster's novel Howards End, but set in the modern day and (mostly) in America. In the beginning of the novel, I quite enjoyed this. Smith used the bare bones of that plot to talk about class, race, and gender in meaningful ways. (To be fair, Forster did this to an extent too, but his concept of race was the English versus the Germans.) It was also fun to see how she updated certain things -- like Leonard Bast's umbrella becomes Carl Thomas's portable music player. However, the scale is much larger here as there are far more characters to explore. That is what I found to be the problem with the novel (for me at least). There are so many characters that some of them end up getting short shrift in their stories. As a result, many of them seemed distant at best and unlikeable at worst. Really, the only character I cared for was Kiki. While having likeable characters isn't always the end all be all, it's difficult to really enjoy a book that is pretty much a character study when the characters aren't great. And, as much as I didn't necessarily like the endings for many of the characters in Howards End, at least they got endings. Here everything felt completely unresolved. After investing a great deal of time in them, almost all the characters were as they were in the beginning of the novel -- little growth or awareness attained, let alone tangible differences in their lives.While it had a strong start, this novel went on for what seemed to be interminably long to me, which is why I ended up rating it fairly low. It felt like Smith was trying to make a point with some of the subplots (e.g., the Haitian refugees), but the minutiae of Howard's sex life, Claire's poetry class, Zora's unrequited crush, etc. etc. etc. drowned out any real big message. On the plus side, the audiobook narrator did an awesome job with a large cast of characters to voice, all with very different accents and inflections.

Good but not very memorable. Some of the ideas of beauty are explored but I wish the Rembrandt theme had have been more detailed - I couldn't quite understand it's importance yet it clearly was. Rembrandt adored Saskia but I couldn't see the parallel with Howard and Kiki. Maybe there wasn't one!

There was nothing wrong with this book. Only, it seemed like an unenthusiastic magic trick. Deft and impressive, but not very exciting.

I wanted to scream at a few characters several times in this book, which I'll just put down to Zadie Smith's excellent writing and realistic characters. This is a tale of two families, who don't necessarily get along perfectly, but who live and work within the same community and have a strong connection. Humor is definitely present, as many characters end up in situations only one step removed from ridiculous. As I was reading, I had to double-check the publication date (it was earlier than I expected), as this novel clearly emerged from a particular era, but remains relevant (if not more so) today.