I finished On Beauty, by Zadie Smith this evening. I haven't really given it much thought, but my goal is to note down my immediate reaction to books here, as I used to do with read*. I really like how Smith writes, and was quite enamoured with her first novel, White Teeth, although it made me feel slightly depressed - maybe irritated even - to read such a first novel by someone the same age as me (25 at that time). Not that I had or have ambitions to write a novel, but I have wished over my lifetime that I could be moved to write more than five-paragraph bursts (well). This novel has very real, flawed characters. It may seem trite to say so, but I like well-written and believable flaws, not the contrived ones that a lot of authors seem to put into the characters that populate their novels. There was, I thought, a certain degree of predictability in how some of Smith's characters behaved, but nonetheless I liked feeling aggravated or pleased by their behaviour and feeling as if it was real because people, including myself, might do or say some of those things.
* Part of my previous website that hardly anyone knew about, although I did once get an e-mail from an author of one of the books I wrote up.
posted by Tina on 2/20/2006 | 1 comments | #