num_pages: 443
description: Howard Belsey is an Englishman abroad, an academic teaching in Wellington, a college town in New England. Married young, thirty years later he is struggling to revive his love for his African American wife Kiki. Meanwhile, his three teenage children - Jerome, Zora and Levi - are each seeking the passions, ideals and commitments that will guide them through their own lives. After Howard has a disastrous affair with a colleague, his sensitive older son, Jerome, escapes to England for the holidays. In London he defies everything the Belseys represent when he goes to work for Trinidadian right-wing academic and pundit, Monty Kipps. Taken in by the Kipps family for the summer, Jerome falls for Monty's beautiful, capricious daughter, Victoria. But this short-lived romance has long-lasting consequences, drawing these very different families into each other's lives. As Kiki develops a friendship with Mrs. Kipps, and Howard and Monty do battle on different sides of the culture war, hot-headed Zora brings a handsome young man from the Boston streets into their midst whom she is determined to draw into the fold of the black middle class - but at what price?
language: English
title: On Beauty
titlecomplete: On Beauty
characters: Victoria Kipps, Howard Belsey, Jerome Belsey, Kiki Belsey
genres: Fiction, Family, British Literature, Literature, Adult, Novels, Contemporary, Adult Fiction, Literary Fiction, Race
ratings_count: 80315
places: New England, London, England
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Booker Prize, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Orange Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Somerset Maugham Award, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize
category: Comic Fiction, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Commonwealth Writers' Prize
category: Best Book in South Asia and Europe
publisher: Penguin