So this book is not perfect. It has a fault endemic to many literary writers, which is how their attempts to write in the vernacular of youth culture and hip hop often end up feeling dopey. You also need to have the ability to continue reading about characters who fuck up in a theatrical fashion. But this book still struck me in the heart parts in ways that took me by surprise, not least because E.M. Forster’s Howards End resonated between its lines. On Beauty follows the travails of the Belsey family as they navigate the subtle politics of their bourgie college town life, with all its requisite posturing and hypocrisies. As children of a biracial marriage between a white British intellectual and a practical African-American woman, the kids use different strategies of dealing with a privileged and liberal life where issues of race are not supposed to touch them anymore. (But of course it does.) Their parents aren’t faring any better, since infidelity has exploded their former facade of familial happiness.

Reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah has most likely prepped me into reading this kind of fiction, a non-fantasy that is essentially non-realist. That this book (over?)relies on resonances with other works of art makes it difficult for me to suss out whether its bones book can stand on its own, however. What does it say about a book that you need to read another book beforehand in order to "get" it?

There are so many ways that this kind of setup can go wrong, and at times the story does threaten to spin out of its orbit. But there’s a great depth of emotion that underscores the clash of ethical, aesthetic, and moral viewpoints. I kind of admire Zadie Smith’s gumption to come out with a messy yet fiercely intelligent book like this, where you can almost feel her working through an argument with herself, her upbringing, her nonrational yet deeply held beliefs.