I had first picked up Zadie Smith's White Teeth in college for a contemporary British Literature class. At the time, I thought the novel was funny so at the time she struck me as a British version of Junot Diaz. After reading On Beauty, I realize that Smith can effortlessly create struggle for her characters in a way that I don't think any other contemporary author could, even Diaz.
The novel focuses on the Belsey Family. Each member of the family faces what might be considered face value issues, but are in fact attached to something far deeper, issues that even the characters themselves sometimes miss. Kiki, a black American nurse by profession heads the family as the matron opposite Howard, a white, British University professor. They have three kids; Jerome, Zora, and Levi. The family is altogether lovable and well written. It is apparent that Smith thinks that the problems of mixed children often disguise themselves in more trivial problems, so much so that they are not altogether recognized on a deeper level. For example, trying to take work off on Christmas day becomes a crushing realization of one's own privilege. In fact the Belsey children are constantly butting heads with their privilege, it becomes a deep source of self loathing for them, but they do not necessarily see this - it comes out in the way they choose to express themselves and what they choose to fight for.
This is all related to the heart of what this novel is about; beauty. The central debate is theory, represented by Howard, Zora and many other hilariously stuffy academic characters, versus Sensuality, represented by the poets Claire, Carl, and many other flirty liberal arts characters. It seems that Smith, however, has a different approach to beauty; just being a real ass person. Here she employs wickedly realistic characters like Kiki, Levi, and Choo - individuals who are outside of academia and seem to live in the real world with the rest of us. Smith travels these three realms effortlessly, showing she is intelligent, artsy, and brutally real. The struggle of living as someone of color with means and an astounding education comes alive in this novel in every character she employs.
This comes to be the only real problem I have with novel and ultimately Smith herself as a novelist. I noticed it first in White Teeth where it is more prevalent, but Smith tends to pull characters out of no where in order to illustrate a point. Granted, they are usually good points, but the characters come too fast and are too perfect. It seems almost Ayn Randish. I'm willing to forgive Smith this, as the main character's she creates are powerful representations of ideas and struggles few could capture, but other's might not be so lenient.
Overall, Smith's novel is great. Every character learns exactly what you would expect them to, but in a way that sticks it to any academic you wish you could stick it to. She crafts unusual circumstances in the realm of the University, but she does so in ways that are so believable you never once stop to think of how impossible it might all be, how perfect. In On Beauty Zadie Smith rips the Liberal out of "Liberal Arts" and delicately places something else, something more real, and more human....something as a recent college grad, I wish I could have done.
