Zadie Smith's On Beauty

I guess I am one of the few people at this stage to have read Zadie Smith's On Beauty. So I am delighted to see that Zadie was amongst those on the long list for the 2005 Booker Prize - released yesterday. It deserves to win.

Besides getting what you would expect from Smith; excellent prose, beautifully crafted plot and laugh-out-loud humour, On Beauty is truly an original work. For instance, it is the first book I have read that treats hip-hop culture seriously; It also deals with the fascinating subject of the relationship between the US and UK.

It is so much more than a campus novel. The characters are real with very 21st century problems - the action is not restricted to the ivory tower. The author has certainly caught the zeitgeist, just as she did with White Teeth in 2000 - but On Beauty is more than just a grown-up WT: it is of a different order of magnitude.

I can't go on without giving away too much.

Take it from me: On Beauty is serious shit!

It will be published in the UK in early September.

John Bolton
I am not surprised to see that Bush has got his neocon bully-boy Bolton to do the UN ambassador's job. Good day for the megalomaniacs. Bad day for the rest of us.
I wish somebody would write an honest description of US overseas campaigns since the second word war and force feed it to the dumb Americans who elect such scoundrels.
They could do worse that read a little of what Prof Noam Chomsky has to say.

My Gaad, isn't he a liberal?

Ah go back and watch your dumb-ass Fox Noos.

Hey Blair is going to stand down before the next election.

Yeh, maybe he wants to pursue his acting career in the proper arena.

What a disastrous period his period in office has been.