On Beauty

It feels weird to say this felt like a roller coaster, but that is how it felt. Lots of emotional scenes, especially near the end. This book is so, so similar to Crossroads in themes and style - even the family dynamics. If you enjoyed Crossroads, you ought to try this.

I do want to note that I feel like this might be written differently post #MeToo. There are some uncomfortable relationships that I think are written as uncomfortable, but I think the thoughts and actions of characters would be different in today’s environment and Smith probably would have adjusted for that.

This book is full of unlikable characters that Smith gets me to care about anyway - to hate one moment and sympathize with the next. There are multiple very moving scenes. Overall the book feels sort of meandering, but I was so invested in this family, I was compelled to keep reading. In a way that is pretty rare with me.

Many themes are handled here - race, especially as it pertains to middle/upper class Black people, sex, academia politics, coming of age, classism, and - of course - beauty. I think the idea of beauty comes up in many ways - beautiful bodies, beautiful writing, beautiful art, beautiful people, beautiful speech, etc.

I’m not sure what to make of the ending. Perhaps Howard finally wants to say “I like the tomato”?

Favorite quotes:
If she were white, maybe it would refer only to sex, but she was not. And so her chest gave off a mass of signals beyond her direct control: sassy, sisterly, predatory, motherly, threatening, comforting – it was a mirror-world she had stepped into in her mid forties, a strange fabulation of the person she believed she was.

Jack was now faced with a task he dreaded: saying something after reading a poem.

A clearing opened in her mind, and in it she tried to restage one of her earliest memories of Howard – the night they first met and first slept together. But it could not be conjured so easily; for at least the past ten years the memory had presented itself to her like a stiff tin toy left out in the rain – so rusty, a museum piece, not her toy at all any more.

Then he laughed and looked at his son with fond wonder. What a period this was to live through! His children were old enough to make him laugh. They were real people who entertained and argued and existed entirely independently from him, although he had set the thing in motion. They had different thoughts and beliefs. They weren’t even the same colour as him. They were a kind of miracle.