On Beauty [Audio Download]

This book was given to me as birthday present, which I requested. And whilst I enjoyed the book on the whole, I kept thinking that the plot and the characters were almost distracted by something profound that Smith was trying to get out.

I enjoyed the relationship troubles of Howard Belsey but I just kept thinking that Smith was attempting to make a statement about it, only I couldn't figure out what it was. I thought that it might have been a view on black people in academic society and the difficulties they face because of their race, or different perceptions. But I'm just not convinced.

The plot was rather slow and laboured I found. There is so little that actually happens. The narrative takes you along as though there will be an explosion of actions, explanations, grand gestures etc - but there isn't. It's quite deflating in many parts of the novel and quite disappointing. Much of the action relies on odd scraps of information about what happened before the setting of the novel, which makes things difficult.

However, where Smith redeems herself is within the characterisation. They are BRILLIANT. I particularly fell in love with Levy. I thought that his youth and vibrancy really made the novel enjoyable. Levy is the son of Howard and Kiki and at the moment he is embracing the African American heritage of rap music and culture. He lightens up proceedings completely. As does his mother Kiki. She reminds me of a warm, soulful and loving woman to whom one could unload a lifetime of troubles and she would listen, dispite the fact that she has problems of her own. I became a bit furious with Jerome and his naivity, but perhaps that's just a sign of Smith's ability to create good characters.

All in all I found the book was slow plot-wise but the characters were wonderful and they entertained me more than the plot. I still can't think if Smith's lack of plot was for a specific statement she wanted to make. Perhaps I won't ever find out.

This book is chiefly about two very different families and the way they interact.

But interwoven through this are meditations on different kinds of beauty: music, art, poetry, inner beauty and the skin-deep variety. Beauty has a disruptive power - it can be used as a kind of weapon - and this is shown in particular by the havoc caused by V, a beautiful young black woman whose strict Christian upbringing does not hold her back from enjoying the social and sexual advantages of beauty and youth.

It is ironic that this book was written by a young author whose own beauty has provoked a ludicrous level of media attention. This is probably unwelcome to ZS, and also unfair to other equally talented, less photogenic novelists.

As someone who struggles painfully between Christian faith and agnosticism, I also appreciated and admired ZS's handling of faith matters. I've not read any other novel that reflects so well my own experience of living in a contradictory, philosophically untenable yet tolerant society of believers, non-believers and don't-carers.

The debate between liberalism and conservatism in the novel is also very interesting. Maybe it's more relevant to American readers, but I think also important for British readers too.

I didn't give it 5 stars (and would probably really give it 3.5) because sometimes the author's art did not always conceal her artfulness. The episode of Levi Belsey proposing direct action at the megastore where he works, for example, seemed staged just to bring about the conflict between two black so-called 'brothers' from different sides of the class-divide. Also, ZS may have been trying to put a message across about the plight of Haitian people, but in the novel I just wasn't interested. And Jerome was a little underdrawn.

Finally, but most importantly, I thought the novel's spell began to wear off towards the end, and I grew slightly impatient for the whole thing just to be tied up. But this was partly because I hadn't been able to put the book down; and the closing scene is excellent. Overall, the book is very well written.

I actually heard ZS read from her novel at a book festival, and she gamely put on American, English, Nigerian and Jamaican accents to great effect. A novel well suited to be an audio book.

Reader, F, 31.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." - Keats

Zadie Smith's third novel is a catastrophe. As usual her characterisation is sensitive and engaging, her dialogue is sharp and her ideas are flowing, but the plot is a disaster. The book was patchy, nonsensical and lacks structure or meaning. The pretentious echoes of Howards End were truly depressing and did not seem to make any sense in the context of the story; in fact I find it insulting that Smith dared to integrate the ideas of such a masterpiece into her own work. They didn't even make any sense in the context of the story. I am confused as to what On Beauty is meant to be about; is it meant to be some kind of profound exploration of modern aesthetics? A radical portrayal of class- and race- related confrontation? Or just a warm-hearted feel-good novel about a priviledged American family? What Smith has done is half-heartedly combine these three into a patchy, rambly book which lacks direction and any kind of resolution. It would need far more editing and far fewer characters it it were to make any sense at all.

E M Forster will be turning in his grave.