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 On Beauty by Zadie Smith. Orange Prize
(Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) In order to appreciate this outstanding and sometimes hilarious novel, you have to hear about the characters first. Now, the Belseys are an unusual family. Howard, the dad, is a white Englishman who escaped his working-class roots to become an art-history professor. His specialty is Rembrandt, but he perversely sticks to the unpopular opinion that Rembrandt is an overrated hack. He has dedicated his career to tearing down Rembrandt. He now lives in the small town of Wellington, Massachusetts in a large rambling house inherited from his wife's family. He teaches at the exclusive Wellington university, and hopes for tenure, but the dry little book he is writing on Rembrandt has been in manuscript form all over the floor of his study for years, and he's not sure if he will ever get it published. He has recently rocked his family to the core by having an affair with an unnamed female colleague. Kiki, the mom, is an African-American former activist. The down-to-earth center of the family, she used to be slender but has gradually transformed into a big, earthy woman who weighs more than her husband. She is humorous, compassionate, and ferociously intelligent in a non-academic way. It has taken every scrap of her willpower to acknowledge her husband's affair and not press for details. He wants her forgiveness, and she's trying hard, but hasn't gotten there yet. Jerome, the oldest son, is a plump, naïve, and sensitive. In predictable rebellion against his liberal parents, he has converted with great earnestness and no trace of irony to Christianity. His father's affair wounded him so much that he left home to move to England and work for his father's worst enemy, right-wing Christian academic Monty Kipps. Zora, the daughter, is stocky, bitter, intellectual, and aggressively competitive. She enrolls at Wellington university and takes her father's classes. Her ambitions are similar to his. She initially sides with him against her mother over his affair; she finds her mother's strong personality and sentimentality threatening and repellant. Levi, the youngest son, is a sunny-natured teenager. He enjoys putting on a "street" persona like the rappers he admires, but he is really a sweet middle-class kid who enjoys the good life and holds no grudges (not even against his dad for the affair that has rocked his family). He has already decided (in his genial sort of rebellion) that he's not even going to go to college! He chafes at growing up in white, exclusive Wellington, and escapes by train to nearby Boston whenever he can. Howard Belsey considers Monty Kipps as his mortal enemy. Mr. Kipps really doesn't think of Howard Belsey at all. The Kippses are somewhat unusual themselves: Monty Kipps, the dad, is a black Englishman, and an aggressive right-wing academic. He is more successful than Howard Belsey, and has an extremely overbearing personality. The author describes him memorably as a huge man with a very dark Caribbean complexion who has eyes that protrude like those of a pug. Carlene Kipps, the mom, is a black Englishwoman who is eccentric and ethereal. She is in poor health. Michael, their son, is rigidly proper, high-strung, and about to marry a good Christian girl. He appears in the novel briefly in the beginning. Their daughter Victoria is gorgeous and (unbeknownst to them) sexually adventurous. The novel opens just after Howard's affair rocks the Belseys' lives to its core. Jerome flees to England to work for his father's worst enemy, Monty Kipps. While there, he has a brief and disastrous fling with the beautiful Kipps daughter Victoria. She dumps him, and he returns home in disgrace. If this weren't traumatic enough, the Kippses move from England to Wellington, Massachusetts! They settle into a house just down the block from the Belseys. It seems that Monty Kipps has accepted a teaching position at Wellington university. He will be right there on the same campus as Howard. His son has stayed in England, but daughter Victoria plans to attend Wellington university and enroll in Howard's class. Both Howard and Jerome do not know if they can stand the horror. But Kiki unexpectedly makes friends with Carlene Kipps, the eccentric and ailing matriarch of the Kipps family. Zora, the unattractive Belsey daughter is not especially enthusiastic to have the gorgeous Victoria Kipps as a classmate. But she soon forgets about Victoria when she meets Carl, a handsome young black man from the ghetto who has a talent for spoken-word poetry. Howard is the weak link in the Belsey family. He desperately wants his wife Kiki to forgive him his infidelities. He feels his marriage teetering on the brink of collapse. What will she do if she ever finds out his affair went on longer than one weekend, and his lover was their good family friend Claire? He knows that Kiki's anger will defy description. Claire is everything Kiki is not: white, tiny and slender, and a tenured professor of poetry. To complicate matters, his own daughter Zora aggressively plays college politics to make the dean force Claire to let her into Claire's class. Claire reluctantly complies though she disdains Zora for not having any talent. When handsome Carl gets drawn into the Claire-Zora orbit, trouble can't be far behind – especially because he is illegally attending classes, not being enrolled or able to afford tuition. Does the Wellington campus really need such a scandal, especially when they are already dividing along battle lines between Howard Belsey (who represents the liberals) and Monty Kipps (who represents the conservatives)? Meanwhile, slinky Victoria is catching the eye of both Carl and Howard! Poor Howard, crushed by his impending failure to gain tenure, is weakening beneath her malicious attentions. What will Monty Kipps do if he sleeps with Monty's daughter? What will the university do if he sleeps with his student? What will Kiki do if he sleeps with this beautiful young woman? What will his own daughter Zora do if she ever finds out – she who would do a lot to remove rival Victoria from her pursuit of Carl. Throughout it all, Levi goes about his life, ignored by all. He loses his music-shop job in Boston, and falls in with some hard-bitten Haitian street-vendors. Suddenly his consciousness is getting raised, and he's becoming an activist in his concerned, sweet-natured way. Levi goes through some changes himself, and his actions result in the biggest surprise in the book. On Beauty is unputdownable from first page to finish. It is deeply involving, even when the characters are behaving with tragic stupidity, and often absolutely hilarious. I can't recommend it highly enough. On Beauty gets five stars out of five, and is available on Amazon through this link:
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Noteworthy Links: Wonderquest - Science Q/A! The Connection - Tech blog! Author site - John the Eunuch Historical Mystery series, Cozy Mystery List for all your cozy mystery needs, Obsidian Bookshelf - reviews of gay-themed fiction. |
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