On Beauty Paperback – 23 July 2020

Good!

A beautiful family story.The writing style was excellent.The sensitive issue of racism has been represented thoughtfuly but with lots of humour. A feel good story apt to be read in the holiday season.This book is the best work of Zadie Smith.

very useful

On Beauty by Zadie Smith is a family story happening in the fictional college town of Wellington. This is the kind of book which you dislike more in your post-reading introspection, than in actual reading!! The characters lack depth, irrespective of class and privileges.This is not a bad reading. I liked Zadie's flow of language, but the plot and characterization felt shallow . Zadie treats her Belsy characters with undeserved kindness.. However other characters are not extended the same grace, especially the Kipps family. She mocks both liberals and conservatives alike but there's no alternative which she puts forward. Zadie sometimes introduces characters to prove a point and then they are never mentioned again. In one chapter author wanted all Belsey children at one place outside home, so she invented a miraculous coincidence! She invents coincidences like this devoid of logic/ or because she can't think of any convincing way to bring the characters together in one scene! There is mention of black struggle in Haiti through one forgettable character. This character was given a passing mention when the adulterous encounters of Howard was dedicated several pages. Perhaps it is justified since the book is on beauty!? I am at a loss here!I was appaled how she treated her women characters. They are either past/current sex sirens/wannabes or with Victorian ideas of purity and family. In one scene Kiki wonders how her daughter turned out to be what she was:"This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a woman's magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki's knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies-- it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.”This is the general mood of women in this book. Kiki was unable to project herself as a role model for her daughter and so was Mrs Kipps! In fact their daughters go as far as to despise their mothers' very own essence! There is no mention of the men who caused this failure though! I again forgot that this book was on beauty!The ending might be strange in normal families, but since her characters were proven pretentious and status-oriented, it was befitting. The ending also reminded me of making paper flowers - the point where you pull at one end and it transforms into a beautiful flower- only that in 'On beauty' the result was a distorted flower with loose ends dangling!

Awesome

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

excellent condition, on time delivery

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

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

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