Book Review of On Beauty by British Author Zadie Smith

Anyone who read White Teeth does not need to be introduced to Zadie Smith. If you read either of her first two novels, you will have likely have already devoured her latest work of fiction, On Beauty. Her writing is addictive in both its substance and vitality, marking Smith as a young British writer to keep tabs on.

In her third literary installment that won the 2006 Orange Prize, Smith focuses her keen eye upon the spheres of infidelity that surround two families, one American and one British, and the dramatic impact that ensues when the worlds of academia and everyday reality collide.

The Belsey family serves as an eclectic mix in matters of race, religion, education, size and opinion, yet this remarkable ability to remain so different from one another is partially what endears the reader to their case. Alternatively, the British entourage, the Kippses, complement each other quite well, forming a seemingly cohesive unit that only heightens the realization that the Belseys are anything but a tightly knit family, no matter how many Mozart concerts they manage to attend as a family unit.

One of Smith’s amazing abilities as a writer is her capacity to draw her reader into the specific landscapes that her characters chart, principally the London and Boston neighbourhoods that she manifests with startling precision. You can literally smell the tea that permeates every inch of the London streets as well as the authentic apple pie scent that wafts from the windowsills of upper class American homes in Boston.

While Smith’s use of dialogue is remarkably apt throughout the novel, there are a few dangling instances where the voices she gives her characters do not echo against the ear as pristinely or as believably as they rightly should. This might be owing to a tendency to overindulge when charging through speeches that are simply dripping with academic jargon, but it’s a fault that she can be easily be forgiven for, considering that the pleasure of reading her novel severely outweighs a debatably implausible quip or two.

On Beauty is a cohesively unified narrative on the polemic of love and marriage, as well as a complicated but in-depth look at familial relationships. It puts contemporary university existence in America under the microscope and demands a reconciliation between students that walk the halls of universities and those that can only afford to look in through the half-fogged glass.

When asked about how she perceives her own writing, Smith claimed, “I think of my books as collections of sentences and I find I like bits of the writing more than I like other bits.” Please believe me when I tell you that you’ll likely enjoy all the bits she has on offer in On Beauty, as it’s always the bits that draw you in.