What Zadie Did Next ; the Author of the Acclaimed White Teeth has Joined the Bloomsbury Group with Her Third Novel
Evening Standard - London › September 05, 2005
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Summary
On Beauty: A Novel by Zadie Smith (Hamish Hamilton, Pounds 16.99) THE Bloomsbury Group has a new and surprising recruit. One hundred years after the circle began to gather at 46 Gordon Square to discuss "the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects" (G E Moore, Principia Ethica), Zadie Smith has written a novel that's thoroughly Bloomsbury in its method and morality. Even more remarkably, it sustains comparison with any work of art to have emerged from that affected milieu, too.
On Beauty is based firmly on the novel Howards End (1910) by EM Forster (probably, alas, now most widely known through the Merchant- Ivory film with Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave and Helena Bonham- Carter). Smith says the plot of her novel came to her complete in a dream and it was only later that she realised it was a rewrite of Forster she was proposing. Instead of being abashed, she was so intrigued that he had apparently become part of her subconscious that she decided to proceed anyway.See the full content of this document
Extract
What Zadie Did Next ; the Author of the Acclaimed White Teeth has Joined the Bloomsbury Group with Her Third Novel
She makes the indebtedness and the updating equally clear from the start.
Howards End starts: "One may as well begin with Helen's letters to her sister." On Beauty starts: "One may as well begin with Jerome's emails to his father ..."Howards End is about t...See the full content of this document
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