Zadie Smith' s On Beauty


It is very hard to do justice to this complex work in a short review. For instance, I don't think the reviewers on BBC's Newsnight Review read the book properly. Think about it: they were probably handed the book a week ago and told to read it. What you got were a couple of ill-informed sound bytes from in-demand media types, who have very little time to sit in and read a sometimes difficult but rewarding book that took its author a great many hours to create. By the way, on the strength of this first programme in the new run, I think the show has 'dumbed down' quite a bit.
Better to read James Lasdun's piece in the Guardian. This review displays an appreciation of the sheer novelistic intelligence - expansive, witty and magnanimous - that irradiates the whole enterprise.
I agree with his slight quip that Sir Monty's character seems somewhat cartoonish. This is a minor quip of a very rich work.