ON BEAUTY, BY ZADIE SMITH

Next on the xmas stack, though I’d been meaning to read Zadie Smith for a while (basically since listening to her Fresh Air interview). So far also good, excellent character sketches, very unlike my normal fare (whatever that is these days).

Done
Well, I finished this a while ago, and school has erased any interesting thoughts I had about it. I recall it was good, humorous, but I found it difficult to forget the author is a half-black British academic writing about an African American experience. I found all the University faculty and students and their various escapades and entanglements believable, both because I have lived in that world and based on what I knew about the author, but when the book delved into issues of being black in America rather than being black in academia, it felt a bit clunky. But then again, I’m not black, so knows, maybe it was dead on.

Good read. Worth checking out. Apologies for lack of cogent commentary.