On Beauty

Author: Zadie Smith
Date Finished: 2/9/06

The author blurb in the jacket of this book says only this: "Zadie Smith was born in northwest London in 1975 and still lives in the area. She is the author of White Teeth and The Autograph Man."

1975. 1975! Perhaps I'm taking this a bit too personally (I was born in 1973), but I read between the (three) lines of the blurb this: "Zadie Smith is smarter than you ever will be as evidenced by the fact that in a life of just 30 years, she has already published three novels, so why don't you just delete that word processing program and spare us all. Hmm???" I mean, really. Out of 26 words to give us a sense of who wrote this book, we need to know when she was born?

Okay, I'm through with that. The fact is that On Beauty was a pretty good book. Smith tells us that she modeled the story after E.M. Forster's Howard's End (which I will be rereading in the near future) and she does a good job delivering a story about a group of people whose way of coping with the world affects what happens to them and the people they love.

After finishing the novel, I turned to the trusty Internet to read more about Smith. This article from The Guardian argues that the intellectual deconstruction of a novel may sometimes miss the point; Smith suggests here that there may need to be a language to talk about "loving" books or books that "do us some good". I see a parallel to On Beauty with this line of thinking. Smith's characters in the novel put on their armor of intelligence and analysis and then find themselves weighted down and stepping clumsily on the toes of beauty, love or loyalty. The most satisfying moments in the story for me came when the characters faced up to the inadequacies of their approach to relationships--relationships with art and literature as well as with other people.

For example, Zora, a professor's daughter in the story takes on a cause: keeping a non-student, a street poet/rapper named Carl in a poetry class at the college. She writes letters, delivers arguments to the faculty, circulates petitions and has her heart broken when she sees Carl kissing a thinner, prettier (and I must mention, as this is a crucial plot point, sluttier) girl at a campus party. Zora is a star within her college; professors and students alike admire her and are a little scared of her, but she fails in the context of a romantic relationship. In Zora's mind, her work on Carl's behalf shows her feelings and proves her worthiness; ultimately when he shows his sexual attraction for another girl, Zora loses her footing. Her prior experiences winning the admiration of others are of no use to her here; her superior intellect doesn't lessen the hurt in her heart.


Almost One Month Later

I'm finally finishing and posting this, since February 9th when I finished the book and started writing about it, we've moved, rented out our old house and I've spent approximately sixteen bazillion hours fretting about the state of our lives. None of these things have given me any further insight into this book, so in short, I liked it on an intellectual level and an emotional level. Smith is a fine craftswoman of the novel and I will read more by her.

Garner

Author: Kristin Allio
Date Finished: 1/29/06

This book was the winter Read This! selection of the Litblog Co-op. I was lucky enough to find a copy on the 7 day rack at the local library (in fact, I found copies of four of the five contenders for winter Read This!--is someone at the library wired into the LBC?) and took it home among a rather large pile of books I'd been wanting to read, but could never remember to pick up in the three minutes I have to select books between the end of Story Time and the mad dash to the library's toy room.

Anyway. I read the first LBC Read This! selection, Case Histories and liked it, and got about a third of the way through the second selection, The Angel of Forgetfulness, before deciding that life is just too short. Garner almost met the same fate as The Angel of Forgetfulness, because the opening scenes gave me a dizzying sense of "What's going on here?" This isn't a sense that I have much patience with as a reader. But after putting it aside for a couple of days, I picked it back up, thinking I'd better get to it if I was going to get it back before the shortened due date.

It turns out that the uncertainty of the first few pages continues throughout the novel. The story is of a New Hampshire farming community in 1925; people are losing money on agricultural pursuits and one family takes in boarders from the city for the summer. Their daughter, Frances, is found dead in a stream. What happened? Each narrator has his or her own take, suggesting a range of events from tragic love story to a malicious murder. This story was not a quick fun read; instead, it was a quick read that kept me on my toes as I compared one section to another, looking for a coherent story of what truly happened. And to be honest, I'm not entirely sure the novel answered the question, as I thought the ending ambiguous. This is the kind of book that I read reluctantly, but that I think about often. A little challenge to the brain along with an amazing sense of life in rural New Hampshire equaled a fine way for me to spend a few January hours.