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Thalia Book Club: On Beauty with Author Zadie Smith
Thalia Book Club: On Beauty with Author Zadie Smith
Thalia Book Club: On Beauty with Author Zadie Smith
Audiobook1 hour

Thalia Book Club: On Beauty with Author Zadie Smith

Written by Zadie Smith

Narrated by Laura Miller

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

Zadie Smith sits down with Laura Miller to discuss and read from her novel, On Beauty.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 9, 2005
ISBN9781467663892
Thalia Book Club: On Beauty with Author Zadie Smith

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Reviews for Thalia Book Club

Rating: 3.643394660535117 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

2,392 ratings121 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great characterization. Exceptional writing.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    There was nothing wrong with this book. Only, it seemed like an unenthusiastic magic trick. Deft and impressive, but not very exciting.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This novel embodied a new hope on many fronts. the fact that work proved flat served the reptile Jon that most of these other entrprises trumpeting progress were just as inept. Most proved to be more corrupt and vain than simply flat, but alas the novel stills trails these associations.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A multi character narrative that doesn't always compute but has something to say.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I wanted to scream at a few characters several times in this book, which I'll just put down to Zadie Smith's excellent writing and realistic characters. This is a tale of two families, who don't necessarily get along perfectly, but who live and work within the same community and have a strong connection. Humor is definitely present, as many characters end up in situations only one step removed from ridiculous. As I was reading, I had to double-check the publication date (it was earlier than I expected), as this novel clearly emerged from a particular era, but remains relevant (if not more so) today.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was my first novel by Zadie Smith and I found it very enjoyable and really easy to get into. I will be grabbing White Teeth as soon as possible.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Definitely witty, but not really lovable. This spot-on satire of the world of universities and academia is laugh-out-loud funny. However, I found most of the characters unlikable, and any attempts to make them relatable - Zora's unrequited crush, for example - just made them seem pathetic. I know that this book is an homage to Howards End, and some scenes are pretty much lifted from the original, but I think it ultimately failed to deliver Forster's message of "Only connect."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a family drama involving a mixed race couple and their three children in the rarified and competitive world of a college campus. All the disparate lives and loves of the characters are explored , with the childrens' perspectives as the most interesting. The father figures were all pretty loathsome personalities with the female protagonists having the most depth of character. The drama of these difficult and fractious lives are fun to explore.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I slowly came to like this book. The characters gradually grew on me, at least those I felt sympathy for. An interesting story of a family in an almost critical state and how they deal with themselves and their outside influences. I could not tune in to Howard or Victoria at all however. An interesting book, looking at different types of beauty. Glad I've read it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Zadie Smith writes like real people talk- she has a sensitive ear for dialogue which makes this book very enjoyable to read. Her two main characters are the inter- racial couple, Howard and Kiki, both of whom she portrays realistically and with enough sympathy , that the reader can connect with them and their roller coaster of a marriage. The other characters are their children who take a less prominent yet important role in this story of relationships. 4 out of 5 for being entertaining without being too heavy.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This novel is illuminated throughout with glorious, deep, sparkling prose, but I didn't "like the tomato." Most of the characters were unlikable and the plot somewhat unbelievable. What was supposed to be a satire of academia just seemed ridiculous in places; it's a stretch of the imagination to believe that a professor could get an archivist's position created just to placate an unqualified undergraduate who might make trouble, and that the university would both approve such a thing and let an undergrad fill it without doing a search for, oh, I don't know, somebody with at least a master's in library and information science. For all of the focus on race and social justice in the book, I found it disappointing that a plus-size character, one of the only sympathetic ones in the story, was so often reduced to her size. The rambling details of the plot also took far too long to relate to each other. This is the kind of work you read if you want to study writing, but not necessarily if you want to enjoy it.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    What is brilliant dialogue? For some years sharply written direct narration (reported speech), using quotation marks and minimal contexts, has been associated with publications like McSweeney's and the New Yorker, and also with writers who also work for television, like Richard Price. I don't know if there's been a study of this style, but it is taught in hundreds of MFA programs. Zadie Smith excels at it. Her dialogue is honed and alert. She's always listening to what's happening around her characters--they might be interrupted at any moment by an alarm, or a dog barking, or a neighbor. She's attentive to what doesn't need to be said. She describes contexts as minimally, telegraphically, evocatively, unexpectedly. Much of this book, and also the novel "NW," is dialogue, and it seldom flags. There are vanishingly few false notes. Every sentence has to be read, nothing can be skimmed. The writing is taut, scintillating, resourceful, articulate, consistently engaging. Sentences ring true to the characters who speak them, their times, ages, places, desires. I dislike all of that. Why try so hard to keep your reader's interest, page after page? Why demonstrate brilliance, line after line? Why keep the energy fizzing, the quality topped up, the language razor-sharp? Why not let things go at different paces, go slack, run off track, wander? Why not rant for a few dozen pages, like Bernhard? Or mull indecisively, like Beckett? Or pause to describe, like Flaubert? There's a desire, in writing like Smith's, to keep the reader's admiration and attention at all costs. As if writing is a high-wire act and the crowd is incipiently bored: there has to be a high wind at all times or the reader spectators will yawn. I find myself both entertained and exhausted by Smith. As the books go on, it becomes increasingly difficult to care about her skill: I take note only when she does something especially spectacular, as in the scene in this book in which the narrator's infidelity is revealed to his wife with an exceptionally subtle expression, exceptionally subtly described. The philosopher Karsten Harries called this the "kitsch economy": the necessity to continuously up the voltage, to outdo previous effects, because audiences have become numb. After fifty pages, I begin to feel I have been devalued as a reader: the author apparently thinks I need to be entertained at every moment, that I have no way of taking in longueurs, no interest in diversions, little capacity for meditation. It's as if brilliance is style, rather than an ornament or strategy within a style.Smith has said, in an interview with the Paris Review, that she thinks there are more ways to be an innovative writer than carrying on the modernist experiment in writing, which she associates mainly with Joyce. She remarked that it's also innovative to bring new social configurations into novels, like the poor Londoners in "NW" or the mixed, transatlantic Afro-Caribbean characters in "On Beauty." Much of her appeal to reviewers and readers is her explorations of identity and ethnicity, and it is true that she finds subjects that have not yet been part of the discourse of novels. But she is wrong, I think, to equate that kind of innovation with the modernist experimentation with language. It's a category error: Joyce also had unusual ethnic content, and Smith's new content still has to be expressed using the languages of the novel. The two sources of innovation are entwined, but one does not lead to the other. If you pretend that linguistic innovation is a thing of the past, you become oblivious to the indebtedness, possibilities, and obligations of your own linguistic practices. And there is a blind spot in her sense of her own project as a novelist, because her writing is deeply indebted to Joyce, especially the Joyce of "Ulysses." She uses a number of his innovations, for instance the device of having a character speak before he or she has been introduced, compelling the reader to keep going a while before the speaker's context and meaning become clear. She is, in fact, in the line that leads from Joyce to more recent writing, but she chooses, or needs, not to see her work in that way.Personally, I am not interested in Afro-Caribbean identities, or in campus novels (and I'm especially not interested in depictions of my own field, art history), and so much of this book's content isn't engaging. That leaves the writing. It is breathless in its desire to capture my attention at every moment, and I find that it shrinks my sense of myself as a reader, giving me less scope to imagine or experience as I might hope. And I am baffled by the author's own idea that she isn't in the modernist tradition, that she isn't engaging possibilities of writing that began, for her, with Joyce. Surely it doesn't make sense to imagine the kind of dialogue in this book as being simply true to life, or merely beautiful, brilliant, or articulate dialogue: her style of writing has a specific history, and it echoes with the achievements of novelists of the past. But she does not imagine her work that way: apparently she thinks her skills as a writer serve her interests in politics, race, class, and identity, the way faceless servants once attended to Europeans who remained unconscious of their presence.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I listened to this one first as I was painting the living room on Duffus Street. I liked it so much, I read it within the year. It's a wonderful novel. For me the most compelling aspect was how the young characters dealt with the roles their appearance gave them. How does a boy who is raised middleclass in a mixed race marriage cobble together a recognizable identity? How does a very beautiful young person cope with the attention beauty gets them? The characters are rich with contradictions and the ordinary randomness of human behaviour and the consequences of those behaviours. I love this novel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a refashioning of E.M. Forster's Howard's End, and it is incisive and brainy in both premise and execution. As an academic, I greatly enjoyed the satirical treatment of the culture wars and values that wage on our intellectual stages. Everyone is unlikeable, which is the point, in my view. I suspect that your enjoyment of this book will vary with your enjoyment of literary fiction, but no one can deny that Zadie Smith is one of the great novelists of the 21st century.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    My favorite Zadie Smith book.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
     I don't know that to make of this. It starts out, seems to get lost and never seems to get to a point where it feels like it has finished. I'm just not sure I get it.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Given how great [WHITE TEETH] is, I was really looking forward to [On Beauty].The characters tried too hard to be characters and there were none to connect to,while the plot was simply mostly boring, with some finely tuned descriptions of nature woven in.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed this book. At first, there are far too many characters to get to know but it settles down into a tale of two families and how their lives are intertwined.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Smith looks at the lives of two professors' families in a small New England town and the people around them. This book is loosely based on E.M. Forster's novel Howards End, but set in the modern day and (mostly) in America. In the beginning of the novel, I quite enjoyed this. Smith used the bare bones of that plot to talk about class, race, and gender in meaningful ways. (To be fair, Forster did this to an extent too, but his concept of race was the English versus the Germans.) It was also fun to see how she updated certain things -- like Leonard Bast's umbrella becomes Carl Thomas's portable music player. However, the scale is much larger here as there are far more characters to explore. That is what I found to be the problem with the novel (for me at least). There are so many characters that some of them end up getting short shrift in their stories. As a result, many of them seemed distant at best and unlikeable at worst. Really, the only character I cared for was Kiki. While having likeable characters isn't always the end all be all, it's difficult to really enjoy a book that is pretty much a character study when the characters aren't great. And, as much as I didn't necessarily like the endings for many of the characters in Howards End, at least they got endings. Here everything felt completely unresolved. After investing a great deal of time in them, almost all the characters were as they were in the beginning of the novel -- little growth or awareness attained, let alone tangible differences in their lives.While it had a strong start, this novel went on for what seemed to be interminably long to me, which is why I ended up rating it fairly low. It felt like Smith was trying to make a point with some of the subplots (e.g., the Haitian refugees), but the minutiae of Howard's sex life, Claire's poetry class, Zora's unrequited crush, etc. etc. etc. drowned out any real big message. On the plus side, the audiobook narrator did an awesome job with a large cast of characters to voice, all with very different accents and inflections.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    "The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free."The plot of this novel centres on an academic rivalry between two families, the Belseys and the Kippses. Howard Belsey and Monty Kipps are both Rembrandt scholars despite Howard hating the artist and has dedicated his life trying to disprove that Rembrandt was a "genius". Howard is a English white professor who has spent 10 years without gaining tenure at the fictional Wellington University just outside of Boston. He is about to celebrate 30 years of marriage to Kiki, a 250lb black African American hospital administrator and have three college/university aged children. Howard is an intellectual liberal and an atheist. In contrast Monty Kipps is a black populist academic who is conservative and Christian. Most of the animosity between the two has taken place trans-Atlantic but when Monty arrives at Wellington with his family as a visiting professor their paths are sure to cross.The book opens with e-mails to Howard's from his eldest son Jerome who is working as an intern in London for Monty where he also falls in love and loses his virginity to the latter's daughter but when Howard blunders into the relationship Jerome is sent packing. In contrast the two wives form an unlikely friendship. However the central element of this book is whether or not Kiki will divorce Howard, who has recently had an affair with a work colleague. Before the affair came to light Kiki had regarded Howard as being her best friend so the unexpected friendship with Monty's wife,Carlene, comes as a welcome boom to her. Like their husbands, they are opposites politically and spiritually but come to realise that they also have things in common. They are both black non-academics in a largely white, elite neighbourhood, with children of similar ages and as their friendship grows it becomes one based on shared values rather that social expediency unlike most similar relationships within this novel. As you would expect the reader’s sympathy quickly lies with Kiki, who comes across as more open and generous who unlike her husband appreciates beauty — whether in people, art or nature simply for the pleasure that it gives. Kiki is therefore becomes the emotional heart of a novel where many of the other characters are portrayed as preoccupied and often selfish.Beauty is whether in art or nature is as the title suggests an important theme of this book but is far from being the only one. Race, religion, friendship, feminism, illness and death, family and love also feature heavily. However what is really important is the difference between the beauty on the outside as compared with that which is within. Howard and Monty are obsessed with paintings looking for flaws or the artist's motivation/ viewpoint for them but are incapable of seeing what is happening right in front of them. Zora, Howard's daughter, is seen as forthright and determined but this is just show as inside she is nervous and feels friendless. In contrast Vee, Monty's daughter, is gorgeous on the outside but is pretty shallow on the inside and misinterprets sex with desire whilst Levi, Howard's youngest son, looks for affinity with a group of Haitians despite having never visited the country.There is a certain humour in the prose but it just doesn't last for me. I found the final quarter of this book disappointing and that it ultimately tended to slip into some tired old cliches meaning that I felt that it rather let the remainder down. The reader was also left with far too many loose ends. An OK read but also at times somewhat overblown, a missed opportunity that could have been improved with a little prudent editing.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Dysfunctional families - with education (I originally had the word intelligence in the first few words but I think not). I don't think I would have finished it - if not for my book discussion group lol.

    Some strong women characters- I think that's what kept the story going. One wins, one dies and others just exist.

    Why 2 stars? - I can't choose one star - "I didn't like it" because I did slog through it.. so maybe one and a half would be a better representation of my feelings for the book.

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Good but not very memorable. Some of the ideas of beauty are explored but I wish the Rembrandt theme had have been more detailed - I couldn't quite understand it's importance yet it clearly was. Rembrandt adored Saskia but I couldn't see the parallel with Howard and Kiki. Maybe there wasn't one!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Love her spirit and intelligence. Made me want to read her books, I admit I haven't read any yet.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a tricky one. Smith is never less than highly competent, intelligent and insightful, and yet I was ultimately unimpressed. Depending on where I was up to when you asked me, my rating would vary wildly as some characters and story lines I found compelling while others, in particularly that of the horrible ("main" character) Howard, were annoying and disappointing.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    According to the New York Times this was one of the 10 best books of 2015. I wish I could agree. The fictional college of Wellington offers a backdrop for some interesting characters and a lot of campus intrigue, but it took me a long time to really get into the book. Enjoyed the ending more than much of the rest of the book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    view all 6 status updatesReviewOn Beauty by Zadie Smith5 starsI have not heard/read any strong reviews for this book and fully expected to struggle and even planned to give up and switch to a different book. When I started the book, I thought "there is no way I am going to relate to these characters". This is about the lives of black people. The author is English, black, the setting is East Coast USA, academia. The story revolves around two families of college professors in the art field. Two men who appose each other in all points of political and moral culture; one white, one black. Two women, their wives, both black and their children who are struggling to find their identities while the adults are falling apart in their midlife crisis. I give it 5 stars, perhaps 4.5 stars would be better. Sex was a big part of this story. I don't exactly appreciate that component but then I think, "could this story be told without the sex?, was this gratuitous sex, to sell a novel?" Over all, I really think the author is all that others have used to describe her "gifted, sassy, philosophical, master of prose, master of detail, clever.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    another reviewer said it best "was not invested in any of these characters or their various crises" I'm 80% finished and ready to be done. Interesting and OK, but not a classic. Trails off at the end
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I never knew the lives of those in academia could be so interesting until I began On Beauty. Howard Belsey and Monty Kipps are both Rembrandt scholars and arch academic rivals. After Kipps' daughter, Vee, and Belsey's son, Jerome, had a brief yet eventful courtship, it seemed as if these two families could go back to living peacefully on separate continents. This peace would be short lived. When Monty Kipps accepts a teaching position at Wellington in the same academic environment as Howard Belsey, it turns out to be anything but peace for either family. While their husbands are assuming fighting positions, Kiki Belsey and Carlene Kipps are forming a friendship. Their new friendship does not strike a balance between the families because the children in each prove to be wild cards. Vee often strays from the Christian value of chastity taught in her home. Zora Belsey is an annoying overachiever with body image and daddy issues. Levi Belsey is trying to shed his privileged background in the land of hip-hop. Jerome Belsey and Micheal Kipps, the oldest sibling of each family, are simply trying to be a support for their family members during all their ups and downs.Both Howard and Monty proved to be full of hot air that neither of them get tired of spewing everywhere. Of the two it was Howard I despised the most. Not just because of his infidelities but he also seemed to be forever out of touch with his wife and children. Kiki Belsey, an African-American woman from the South, holds the Belsey's together. She puts on strength in the midst of all the Belsey chaos. Carlene Kipps is often pushed aside and overlooked by her family. This oversight proves beneficial in the keeping of a devastating secret. Zadie Smith does an amazing job with the dialogue in On Beauty. What I enjoyed the most about this novel is the fact that the families had major problems that weren't glossed over. Mothers that didn't have all the answers. Marriages that were anything but fairy tales. Children with issues. In the end, Smith did not put a bow on it. She let it be. Great writing.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Love Zadie Smith's writing, especially as this novel was in a familiar setting (Wellesley). The Virgin Megastore! Really loved Kiki, Howard's wife. The story was so-so, infidelity on college campuses... Inner city kids not feeling at home on said campuses. But she writes like a dream.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    One of the best things I read in the past year. Extremely well written, funny, touching - Zadie Smith covers it all.