On Beauty
Ratings76
Average rating3.8
One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century
Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction, another bestselling masterwork from the celebrated author of Swing Time and White Teeth
“In this sharp, engaging satire, beauty’s only skin-deep, but funny cuts to the bone.” —Kirkus Reviews
Having hit bestseller lists from the New York Times to the San Francisco Chronicle, this wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars—on both sides of the Atlantic—serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith’s reputation as a major literary talent.
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I wasn't in love with this book. It was, at least, engaged, through most of the book although the last 75 pages or so were a slog. I've read enough campus/professor/infidelity books to last me a life time - didn't really need another. I also thought that most of the book depended on cliches and caricatures and really didn't add anything to the genre.
It's hard to compare to my totally sublime experience reading Smith's first novel, “White Teeth,” for a fabulous class taught by a fabulous professor that elicited fabulous discussion. I hesitate to say that “On Beauty” is gloomier than “White Teeth.” Instead, I think “White Teeth” beautifully straddled the line between tragedy & comedy (often being both at once), and I either (quite possibly) need a class on “On Beauty” to appreciate it fully, or it was more plodding than Smith's first effort.
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