On Beauty
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On Beauty is a 2005 novel by the British author Zadie Smith. The novel, which takes its title from an essay by Elaine Scarry (On Beauty and Being Just), follows the lives of a mixed-race British/American family living in America. A short article in the Guardian has described it as a "transatlantic comic saga". It was shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize on September 8, 2005. This book won Smith the Orange Prize for Fiction [1] in June 2006.
[edit] Plot
On Beauty centres on the story of two families and their different yet increasingly intertwined lives. The Belsey family consists of university professor Howard, a white Englishman, his African-American wife Kiki, and their children Jerome, Zora and Levi, living in the fictional university town of Wellington, outside Boston. Howard's professional nemesis is Monty Kipps, a Trinidadian living in Britain with his wife Carlene and children Victoria and Michael.
The Belsey family has always defined itself as liberal and atheist, and Howard in particular is furious when son Jerome, a newly born-again Christian, goes to work as an intern with the ultra-conservative Christian Kipps family over his summer holidays. After a failed affair with Victoria Kipps, Jerome returns home. However the families are brought into proximity again nine months later when the Kippses move to Wellington, and Monty begins work at the university.
Carlene and Kiki become friends despite the tensions between their families. Rivalry between Monty and Howard increases as Monty challenges the liberal attitudes of the university on issues such as affirmative action. His academic success also highlights Howard's inadequacies and failure to publish a long-awaited book. Meanwhile the Belsey family is facing problems of its own, as they deal with the fallout of Howard's affair with his colleague and family friend Claire.
Zora and Levi both become friends with Carl, an African-American man of a poorer background than their own middle-class lifestyle. Zora uses him as a posterchild for her campaign to allow talented non-students in university classes. For Levi, Carl is a source of identity, as a member of a more 'authentic' black culture than Levi considers his own background to be.
The book is loosely based on Howards End by E. M. Forster, and has been described by Zadie Smith as a 'homage' to Forster's novel. Parallels include the opening sections (Howards End begins with letters from Helen to her sister, On Beauty with emails from Jerome to his father), the bequeathing of a valuable item to a member of the other family (the Wilcox house Howards End is left by Ruth Wilcox to Margaret Schlegel; Carlene leaves Kiki a painting), and more broadly the idea of two families with very different ideas and values gradually becoming linked.
[edit] Themes
On Beauty addresses themes including race and blackness in America and Britain, the nature of beauty, and the clash between liberal and conservative values within academia and the cloistered world of the university.
