Category Archives: Book Reviews

Tessa: I just finished reading On Beauty by Zadie Smith. Usually before I post a review or comments about a book I go on line and read a few other reviews. Both Salon.com as well as The Observer wrote lengthy and glowing reviews so I’ll refrain from doing the same here. Needless to say this comes as no surprise as the book was both the winner of the Orange Prize for fiction in 2006 as well as shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2005.

The book has been hailed as a brilliant homage to EM Forster’s Howard’s End for it’s study of contemporary upper class academic culture with all of its foibles and pretensions. Set mainly in New England but also in London On Beauty traverses the ups and downs of two long feuding families the Belsies and the Kipses.

Howard Belsey, ostensibly the lead character in the novel, is a British professor at a New England liberal arts college. His area of specialty is the deconstruction of the myth of Rembrandt’s genuis, an area if study that has made little impact on anyone outside his immediate circle. He is married to a wonderful black american woman called Kiki with whom he has three children.

His nemesis is Dr. Montague Kipps, a black conservative academic of caribbean descent who has earned his stripes in the British op-ed pages by writing against affirmative action, and seeks to deliver a series of lectures called Taking the Liberal Out of Liberal Arts.

Neither of these characters are particularly inpiring but what they do is serve as a cultural representation of two spectrums of contemporary, cultural and social thought. To that end the book does get you thinking about the issues and ideas related to this. For example, in a free country where freedom of speech is hailed do liberals in the interests of guarding against anti-hate have the right to curtail this very right.

Howard’s and Monte’s posturing on these topics as well as the nature in beauty in art leaves you wondering who cares? Really who does care about whether Rembrandt is hailed as a genious or decried as far less? And in the post September 11 landscape and the ensueing illegal war in Iraq and the almost constant nonsense that hails from the White House and more, who truly gives a crap?

So I guess that’s why it took me so long to read. Who cares about these people? As a measure for where we are culturally in our hallowed ‘educated’ communities I think Smith does a brilliant job of penning a very good satire.

The character that did touch me in the book was Kiki, Howard’s wife. She was from Wellington but not of Wellington which I actually read somewhere else but it rings true. She is not like anyone else there including her own shallow husband.  A large black woman, her kind of smarts hails from within and has much more to do with life knowledge and empathy than with book learning. I liked her and thought she was the story’s redeeming character.

For all of the reasons listed above I think the book is a good quick read but my next selection won’t be about deconstructing the dreadful, full of hot air ‘upper classes’.

Tessa: I recently finished reading  The History of Love  by Nicole Krauss, wife of Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and Everything is Illuminated. Being a hopeless romantic, I was intrigued by the title. Wow, a book not just about love, but the HISTORY OF LOVE. So it surprised me that I didn’t love this book, especially after all the glowing reviews it has received in the press.

The plot is simple. Fourteen year old Alma Singer’s father dies and five years later she can’t stand her mother’s loneliness anymore, so she goes searching for a companion for her. Through a long convoluted plot twist, her search takes her to a book called The History of Love, where she begins to unravel the mystery of the central character in the book, after whom she is named,  and who is clearly the love of the author’s life.

Through several more convoluted plot twists, too many to mention, she is ultimately lead to Leopold Gursky, a survivor of the pogroms in Poland, and now an old man living in New York.

 Leo Gursky was a man in love and he loved a woman who didn’t love him back. And yet. His life and his work are infused with the emptiness of having lost his true love after she leaves the small village in Poland where they grew up together. In truth, I love the character of Leo Gursky. He is a funny, wise, heart broken man, who begins dying early in life, not only because he loses Alma but because he loses everything. And yet. Like most of us, he survives. The greatest loss for Leo, is not what his life is but what it could have been.

 I also like Alma Singer and her brother Bird. But something about this book reminds me too much of Oscar in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and at times I feel like I’m reading the same characters. I guess I’m also tired of books whose narrative structure moves back and forth between characters building a bridge between the two that ultimately leads to the resolution of the plot. Just give me  plain ol’ linear narrative.  In truth I think I read this book too soon after Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and it felt a little too much like reading the same book. I also found the plot somewhat confusing and the transitions between these voices somewhat obfuscating. Maybe I’m just cranky because I’m tired. Anyways, it is a great homage to love and well, that’s always worth a read I think. I’ll leave you with a small poem about Leo Gursky and you can decide if you want to read more.

The Death of Leopold Gursky

Leopold Gursky started dying on August 18, 1920
He died learning t walk.
He died standing at the blackboard.
And once, also, carrying a heavy tray.
He died practicing a new way to sign his name.
Opening a window.
Washing his genitals in the bath.

He died alone, because he was too embarrassed to phone anyone.
Or he died thinking about Alma.
Or when he chose not to.

Really, there isn’t much to say.
He was a great writer.
He fell in love.
It was his life.

Dave: I was hesitant to read this book thinking it would just be another glorified gangster story that we so often see on TV.  What I read instead was a story of how a young boy is swept up into the ruthless world of gang life doing whatever it takes to rise to the top of his set. We see the the rise of Monster Kody, so called for his Monstrous ruthlessness as a soldier for the “Eight Trays” his East LA gang, to his inevitable time in juvenile detention and prison, and his eventual transition from gangster to joining the New African Independence Movement.

Sanyika takes the reader through the mean streets of East LA; exploring  the different hand gestures, clothes, graffiti and loyalty of gang life; of how getting off at the wrong bus stop in the wrong neighborhood can cost you your life. The author also voices his opinion on what he thinks is wrong with the system, adding to the prevalence of gangsterism.

The loyalty, patriotism and honor of these gang members is very similar to the young soldiers going overseas to fight in a government sanctioned war. There is fear of the unknown, the relentlessness of always watching your back and the debilitating affects of post traumatic stress disorder. The war fought at home though is almost entirely ignored by society.

I found this book to be a very revealing and important read and am glad I gave it a chance. The one thing that really stood out is that all this killing is mostly done by children (it reminded me of “The Lord of the Flies“). It’s a book that not only teaches you something but keeps you asking questions long after it’s finished.