Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #143814 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-02
• Binding: Hardcover
• 445 pages

Synopsis
Howard Belsey, a Rembrandt scholar who doesn't like Rembrandt, is an Englishman abroad and a long-suffering Professor at Wellington College. He has been married for thirty years to Kiki, an American woman who no longer resembles the sexy activist she once was. Their three children passionately pursue their own paths, and faced with the oppressive enthusiasms of his children, Howard feels that the first two acts of his life are over and he has no clear plans for the finale. Then Jerome, Howard's oldest son, falls for Victoria, the stunning daughter of the right-wing icon Monty Kipps. Increasingly, the two families find themselves thrown together in a beautiful corner of America, enacting a cultural and personal war against the background of real wars that they barely register...

Customer Reviews

Waste of time
The most annoying book I ever read. I struggled to go through it hoping it will get better soon. This did not happen. Worthless. All- dialogs, e-mails, characters- is just plain and odd. How could she get the prize for IT?!

Campus Comedy
This is a campus novel, with the familiar trope of intelligent academics and their less-than-clever foibles and human follies. It uses EM Forster's "Howards End" as a kind of template, showing two contrasting families, the Belsey's and the Kippses. The tension between them stems from the fact that the academic men in both families are writing about Rembrandt, and that Jerome Belsey fell for Victoria Kipps while working for (Sir) Montague Kipps. The name "Montague", taken from "Romeo and Juliet", gives an idea of the pointless duel between the two clans, though it's comedic rather than tragic.

Zadie Smith writes very well, a poetic, metaphorical prose. But she's equally good with plot and action as with character, evoking atmosphere, ideas or with setting. To some extent I think the campus novel is ideal for her, allowing her to write about ideas and characters with a satirical, comic eye - although this is the only novel of her that I have read, so I can't comment on how well she does other things! Nonetheless, she does seem to have an affinity to the fine surroundings of New England and the artists and writers academics concern themselves with - Gramsci, Rembrandt, Baudrillard and all.

Smith also handles the set-pieces of the novel very well - these are numerous and ultimately satiric, which is to say comic while making moral points. The scene in The Bus Stop, where Claire (the campus poet) and Zora clash, in the midst of an open-mike night won by a brilliant rap by Carl, is wonderfully realised, as she deftly handles the ideas and ambitions of the various characters. The scene with Howard Belsey and his working-class father is poignant and very true. The final confrontation between Howard Belsey and Montague Kipps, in a university committee, is also marvellous - the tides of ambition and self-aggrandisement that are implicit in a workplace of many self-important people.

My main criticism would be that some of the characters don't come off, in particular Victoria. She never appears in my mind's eye, and her motivations (especially after the funeral) are uncertain to the point of mystery. Carlene Kipps similarly is shadowy - she is meant to be, perhaps, but there's a difference between that and being insubstantial, which she is.

Overall, I thought this an excellent read, and one which makes look forwards to her later work.

hmm
i read an extract of white teeth and was drawn to zadie smiths style of writing. When i started reading on beauty i couldnt put the book down, however all the excitement and the build up made the ending bad. When i finally sympathised with Howard he lost everything and i just felt the book needed a better ending, i got confused as to the whole point of the book.