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On beauty / a novel by Zadie Smith.
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- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Smith, Zadie, author.
- Series:
- Book club kit.
- Book club kit
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- College teachers--Fiction.
- College teachers.
- Families.
- Morocco.
- Families--Morocco.
- Massachusetts--Fiction.
- Massachusetts.
- Domestic fiction.
- Fictional Works as Topic.
- Medical Subjects:
- Fictional Works as Topic.
- Genre:
- Fiction.
- Domestic fiction.
- Romance fiction.
- Bildungsromans.
- Love stories.
- Penn Provenance:
- Banks, Joanna (donor) (Banks Collection copy)
- Physical Description:
- 445 pages ; 25 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- New York : Penguin Press, ©2005.
- Summary:
- Howard Belsey, a Rembrandt scholar who doesn't like Rembrandt, is an Englishman abroad and a long-suffering professor at Wellington, a liberal New England arts 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: Levi quests after authentic blackness, Zora believes that intellectuals can redeem everybody, and Jerome struggles to be a believer in a family of strict atheists. 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. Or the encore. Then Jerome, Howard's older son, falls for Victoria, the stunning daughter of the right-wing icon Monty Kipps, and 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. An infidelity, a death, and a legacy set in motion a chain of events that sees all parties forced to examine the unarticulated assumptions which underpin their lives. How do you choose the work on which to spend your life? Why do you love the people you love? Do you really believe what you claim to? And what is the beautiful thing, and how far will you go to get it?
- Contents:
- 1. Kipps and Belsey
- - 2. Anatomy lesson
- - 3. On beauty and being wrong
- Author's note.
- Notes:
- Orange Prize for Fiction, 2006.
- Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards - Fiction, Winner, 2006
- Local Notes:
- Kislak Center Banks Collection copy presented to the Penn Libraries in 2018 by Joanna Banks.
- Banks Collection copy: dustjacket retained.
- ISBN:
- 1594200637
- 9781594200632
- 9780143037743
- 0143037749
- 073946602X
- 9780739466025
- OCLC:
- 61396956
- Online:
- Contributor biographical information
- Publisher description
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