Venus Rising

Film & BooksIssue: Aquarius 08

On Beauty

This book grabs the reality of life with two hands and shakes it upside down. Those who appear to be physically beautiful and those whose eloquence is often over-beautified, are the most repulsive characters. “On Beauty” is about being real, about dealing with life, and about the need to reexamine what “living” really means.

ON BEAUTY by Zadie Smith, 446 pp., The Penguin Press $25.95

The first line of “On Beauty” is reminiscent of EM Forster’s “Howard’s End.” Much of Smith's plot echoes that of Forster's; however, the themes are slightly different. Smith's primary theme is made most evident in the first half of her latest novel:

The unexamined life is not worth living.  That had been Howard’s callow teenage dictum.  Nobody tells you, at seventeen, that examining it will be half the trouble. (153)

Like life, the un-examined book is not worth reading. What makes a book worth reading is indeed its ability to scrutinize relationships. Smith juxtaposes issues of multiculturalism and class in urban America against the pressures of political correctness and personal relationships while using a variety of Rembrandt portraits as a backdrop for her descriptions. She infuses Tupac's rap music into these descriptions, making a profound connection between the two distinctly different artists. The lives of her characters create a story about crossroads. At each crossroad, the beautiful examine their lives and re-examine their personal paths.

Kiki Belsey is an African-American woman who works at a hospital. Her husband, Howard, rose from the working class of London to be a Rembrandt scholar. Kiki often feels excluded from the social conversations that govern her husband’s daily life. She claims not be an intellectual and yet the legacy of her wisdom – really her beauty – is what makes her at home in this Wellington community in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Howard Belsey lacks integrity and is devoid of self-confidence in any form. It is Kiki who provides her children with the grace and insight to navigate the complex social interactions that are defined by their mixed race, multi-class, and liberal upbringing. Jerome, the eldest of the children, emails that he will be marrying Victoria, the daughter of Howard’s arch rival. Howard wants put the kibosh on this marriage. He is petrified by the idea that Monty Kipps, another Rembrandt scholar could become a part of his inner circle.

Monty Kipps’ right wing, Christian ways rub off on Jerome. Jerome studies Economics at Brown, and though he could easily dismiss his family, he finds pleasure in returning home to Wellington to be with his siblings. Every member of the Belsey family rolls their eyes at his new found faith.

Levi the youngest of the Belsey children is at the impressionable age of 16. He would like to disavow his middle-class roots and so he tries too hard to become just another boy from the hood. His fervent efforts to return the goods to the people glorify the beauty of Kiki’s capacity to befriend and be loved by many.

Zora Belsey is a hard-working student at Wellington. Unlike her mother who was a svelte beauty in her college years, Zora is awkward in her physique. Her powerful voice against her humble insecurities resembles her mother’s inner beauty. It is Zora, not Kiki, who confronts the reality of what has become her parent’s marriage. Ultimately, it is Zora who frees her mother from an institution that refuses to see the beauty within her mother’s now 250-pound body.