Choices - Fiction
Zadie Smith - On Beauty
 | On Beauty by Zadie Smith Set in New England mainly and London partly, "On Beauty" concerns a pair of feuding families - the Belseys and the Kipps - and a clutch of doomed affairs. It puts low morals among high ideals and asks some searching questions about what life does to love. For the Belseys and the Kipps, the confusions - both personal and political - of our uncertain age are about to be brought close to home: right to the heart of family. In what is often seen as a homage to E M Forster, the central concerns of Howards End, the conflict between two families of opposing political and moral sensibilities, issues of class, behaviour, ambition and opportunity in a society with proscribed rules and roles, are also the framework that supports Smith's exceptionally accomplished novel. Winner of the Orange prize for Fiction 10 2006. |
