Just saying.

I am now finished with On Beauty, and I must say that I loved it.

However, I loved it more in the beginning than I did at the end(I don’t want to spoil anything because I don’t think we are expected to be done with it yet so some of ya’ll may still be reading—therefore, this is going to be kind of vague).
In the beginning of On Beauty, Smith offers up for examination two very different families. At first I thought she was treating the two fairly, as in she was not judging either’s ideology, but I now feel that she tried really hard to make the Kipps family corrupt and hypocritical, and by doing so made the Belsey’s look superior.

Professor Newman asked us in class which family we felt more sympathetic to, or which family reminded us the most of our own family. I didn’t say anything because everybody was choosing the Belsey’s and I didn’t feel like being the odd one out or being judged or anything. But really, my family is way more like the appearance of the Kipps family at the beginning of the novel (not what they actually turned out to be). We are an African-American Christian family with certain morals and values that I guess would be considered conservative. I was not allowed to watch Pokémon, to read Harry Potter, or to watch PG-13 movies without permission until I was like 16. My parents maybe tried a little too hard to shelter me from the world, but they had great intentions and I am none the worse from it. Anywho, my point is that I was mildly annoyed by her portrayal. I am not(nor are any of my sisters) Victoria Kipps. My dad is not Monty Kipps. We are nothing like this family that is technically supposed to represent us.

I just honestly found myself kind of upset by the end—I feel like so much literature these days bashes and judges the religious and the conservatives for bashing and judging certain other groups. Doesn’t that kind of make the writers of these literature hypocrites? I mean, how can you be angry at one group for being narrow-minded and quick to judge when you yourself are narrow-minded about the group that they are in and maybe do not realize the whole story or the fact that not every Christian and not every conservative is the same? Just like for everything else, there are degrees of Christianity and of conservatism. There are radicals, but their beliefs are not necessarily the beliefs of the whole group.

Just saying.

I guess the counter-argument to this would be Carlene Kipps. She was genuine. But that’s one out of four—Smith couldn’t do any better than that?

Ha, okay, now that my rant is over, I really did love this novel. The story and the characters are real and vivid. My favorite character is Kiki for sure. There is something very warm and lovely about her—she’s the one character that I wouldn’t mind meeting if she were a real person. Well, I guess I wouldn’t mind meeting Jerome either, he just annoys me sometimes. Oh, and Carlene—okay, so she is one of three. I despise Howard, Monty, and Victoria. I have a strong dislike for Zora. Levi leaves me with neither a negative nor a positive impression.

The end was sort of disappointing, but I will wait for everybody to finish before I explain why.

Happy reading.