Title: On Beauty
First published: 2005
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?"--BOOK JACKET
Subjects: Racially mixed children, Teenagers, Fiction, Interracial marriage, College teachers, African American women, Domestic fiction, Families, Fictional Works, Literature, Marriage, Family, Mixed-race families, University professors, Haiti, New England, London, Universities--Fictional, Race, Ethnicity, and Identity, Race relations, Intergenerational relations, English fiction, United states, fiction, Fiction, general, Large type books, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, sagas, Fiction, humorous, general, Man-woman relationships, fiction, Atheists, Racially mixed families, Conservatism, Fiction, family life, Fiction, family life, general, Literature and fiction (general), Fathers and sons, Women authors
Places: Massachusetts, London, UK, Boston, MA, USA, New England, Great Britain
Time periods: 2000s