But she makes it explicitly clear that the campus she writes about is not Harvard, and in doing so, broadens her multifaceted debate on the world of academics beyond the walls of any one institution. Smith sets her story in Wellington, a fictional college town near Boston that bears more than a passing resemblance to Cambridge, where she recently taught at Harvard. And like in White Teeth, the various characters and subplots clash ecstatically together towards the end - this time, in a drunken brawl at a fraternity party in which secrets held from one another are revealed and illuminate the larger themes explored in the novel. Like in White Teeth, the characters in On Beauty mingle in and out of each other’s lives in exuberant and surprising ways (including in a number of incongruous romantic entanglements).
The Kipps are right-wing ultra-conservatives: British Trinidadian Montague is Howard’s academic rival, while his wife, Carlene, one of the lesser formed characters in the novel, plays a pivotal role when, upon her death, she bequeaths a surprising gift to Kiki.īut while Smith borrows from Forster (she calls it an homage to the writer whom all her fiction is indebted), she turns the narrative into something that’s distinctly her own. The Belseys are liberal and multicultural: Howard is a British-born white art history professor, while his wife, Kiki, is an African-American hospital administrator. Forster’s Howard’s End, in which the lives of two families with vastly different lifestyles and worldviews intertwine. Unlike in The Autograph Man, in which both plot and character development seemed thin, On Beauty harkens back to the full, engaging, spirited storytelling of White Teeth. With On Beauty, Smith takes a more traditional storytelling route one where the language is more calm and sedate - a slight letdown, in a way, considering what she’s proven herself capable of achieving.īut what On Beauty lacks in stylistic verve, it makes up for in overarching, mammoth storytelling. It also lacks the daring Post Modernist experimentation of The Autograph Man, with its chapter outlines, and numerous diagrams, and font types.
It lacks the playful, explosively lyrical language of White Teeth (“Millat was a rudeboy, a badman, at the forefront, changing image as often as shoes sweet-as, safe, wicked, leading kids up hills to play football, downhill to rifle fruit machines”).
Stylistically, the novel is a far departure from her first two books. Zadie Smith’s third novel, On Beauty, shows not only the British author’s vast storytelling talents, but also more intriguingly, the chameleon-like ability with which she approaches the craft.
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