On Beauty

£7.99

Zadie Smith’s wonderful homage to Howard’s End provides plenty of parallels for devotees to spot while remaining greatly enjoyable on its own terms. The action has transferred to New England, with some taking place in London, and concerns a pair of feuding families embroiled in a clutch of doomed affairs when the son of an unsatisfied English professor falls for the daughter of a right-wing icon.

The professor’s own marriage is in difficulty too. He’s a Rembrandt scholar, who doesn’t like Rembrandt, married to a larger-than-life African-American who’s not quite the sexy activist she once was. When the two families are thrown together the real wars in the background are soon forgotten as their own cultural and personal wars begin in this beautiful corner of America.