On Beauty

By: Zadie Smith

Narrated by: Peter Francis James

Length: 18 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

In this loose retelling of Howard's End, Zadie Smith considers the big questions:

Why do we fall in love with the people we do? Why do we visit our mistakes on our children? What makes life truly beautiful?

Set in New England mainly and London partly, On Beauty concerns a pair of feuding families—the Belseys and the Kippses—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 Kippses, the confusions—both personal and political—of our uncertain age are about to be brought close to home: right to the heart of family.

©2005 Zadie Smith (P)2005 Penguin Audio, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., and BBC Audiobooks America

Critic reviews

2006 Orange Prize for Fiction

2005 Publishers Weekly Listen Up Award, Fiction

"[A] thoroughly original tale about families and generational change, about race and multiculturalism in millennial America, about love and identity and the ways they are affected by the passage of time. Ms. Smith possesses a captivating authorial voice - at once authoritative and nonchalant, and capacious enough to accommodate high moral seriousness, laid-back humor and virtually everything in between - and in these pages, she uses that voice to enormous effect, giving us that rare thing: a novel that is as affecting as it is entertaining, as provocative as it is humane." (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)

"Oh happy day when a writer as gifted as Zadie Smith fulfills her early promise with a novel as accomplished, substantive and penetrating as On Beauty. It's a thing of beauty indeed. In tackling grown-up issues of marriage, adultery, race, class, liberalism and aesthetics, she thrillingly balances engaging ideas with equally engaging characters. As good as she is with big ideas, Smith is even stronger at capturing family dynamics, the heartbreak of broken trust as well as the lovely connections between siblings. (The Los Angeles Times Book Review)

"In this sharp, engaging satire, beauty's only skin-deep, but funny cuts to the bone." (Kirkus Reviews)

Questionable advice

I purchased based on the five stars review. Listened to it twice - thought I had missed something. Story wandered around with the characters and I agree with an earlier reviewer that the ending didn't really seem like an ending at all - I went back to the site thinking I had missed a download.

What's the point

So you sit through hours and hours of this book, hoping to get something out of it, but it never happens. The ending comes and nothing worthwile was accomplished. The title "On Beauty" is a complete misnomer, there is nothing beautiful in this book, none of the characters have any likeable characteristics. The narrative is exhaustingly detailed at times and for apparent reason. It's only because I hate to give up on anything, that I suffered through the whole thing.

Book is excellent but this recording skips!!

Multiple times. Not a playback error on user end, happened across multiple devices. Well performed but something is very wrong overall.

good narrator - relationships tough to buy

The narrator is excellent, and does a good job navigating a variety of accents.

This is my first encounter with Smith's writing. The wide spread of character types made the relationship dynamics tough to buy. The members of the Belsey (sp?) household didn't seem to share any common traits or know much about each other. The academians wore on me. Like "cweather" I found it hard to accept that the dry teacher, Howard, could be alluring to the hottest young student in the story.
There were some interesting subplots - like Carl's foray into musical study, and Kiki's development.

Just not the tale for me...

I only finished listening, because I had already logged the hours to get through the first 2/3rds.

Updated, tweaked, and modernized

When I began this book I was unaware that it was loosely based upon one of my favorite novels, Howards End by E.M. Forster. Updated, tweaked, and modernized, Zadie Smith's similar story unfolded at much greater length. Although some parts were entertaining, it mostly seemed like a very pale imitation. The narration, however, was excellent.

A bit predictable

This audiobook was okay. The narration is good. One of my problems with it is that I didn't like any of the characters much. This was very long, and kind of predictable. I was just kind of glad when I finished it and haven't given it much thought ever since then.

pretentious

This book is one of the most annoying I have ever listened to (or read). Essentially a very boring recreation of the liberal-conservative face off, bound loosely in some very weak character studies. Zadie Smith seems to want to show off her university education by explicating ideas that have already been beaten to death, both on college campuses and in literature. Yawn. But not just boring, more infuriating really - none of the characters are multidimensional, or even just engaging. Father having sex with a teenager, mixed race teenager discovering politics, snobby undergrad making grandiose statements, wise old woman on her death bed - please spare me. I can't understand why there is such hype about Zadie Smith, when this book is just terrible. I stuck with it to the bitter end, and was sorry. Unless you really want to hear more about how liberals and conservatives are really just a bunch of hypocrites, save your money.

Boring

I realize that Zadie Smith is an award winner and that is why I order this book. I was very disappointed in it, however. It read like a soap opera. It was long, drawn out, boring and finally after all the listening, it went nowhere. There was nothing profound and it was not especially written well. I don't know why this was so popular, but I would not recommend it.

Waste of time

I am a continuous listener of audio books and found this one to be pointless, boring and a waste of time. I pushed through it, hoping it would get better, and it never did.

Dull people in a dull book

This book was wonderfully read--each individual voice was distinct without being exaggerated. But the book itself was deeply disappointing: a random series of encounters among a number of cliched characters. And then it ends without having come to any sort of satisfying (or even unsatisfying) conclusion. If I'd been listening to it on CDs, I'd have thought the last one was missing.