On Beauty

I just finished this book by Zadie Smith last night. I really started strong with it, very much liking it. I thought the ending was a bit blah. It is a very long book at nearly 400 pages. Most of the book centers around Howard, a white British man who is very much in the middle of a midlife crisis. Part of the book frustrated me when he has embarked on his second affair with a rival colleague's daughter. He is resigned that he has a future of divorce and chasing younger skirts ahead of him, as if this is his inevitable fate. I think that this mindset was really off the mark. I don't think people have affairs and then divorce and are resigned about their fates so early on. I think that there is a lot of denial about it, a lot of anger and 'how did I get here' - going down the spiral of self-hatred and all that. To be so resigned so early (prior to a separation even) seemed rather naive - as if this is what the author thought (she is my age so early 30's) and was channeling this to the protagonist. Overall it was a good book but it all wrapped up in the last twenty pages. With so much going on at then end, I was sad that it didn't have a more resolved ending.