Excerpt from On Beauty by Zadie Smith, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

‘I start in here?’ asked Monique timidly. Her hand hovered near the high zip of her coat, but she did not undo it.

‘Actually, Monique, could you start in the study – my study,’ said Kiki quickly and over something Howard was starting to say. ‘Is that OK? Please don’t move any papers – just pile them up, if you can.’

Monique stood where she was, clutching her zip. Kiki stayed in her strange moment, nervous of what this black woman thought of another black woman paying her to clean.

‘Zora will show you – Zora, show Monique, please, just go on, show her where.’

Zora began to vault up the stairs three at a time, Monique trudging behind her. Howard came out from behind the proscenium and into his marriage.

‘If this happens,’ said Howard levelly, between sips of coffee, ‘Monty Kipps will be an in-law. Of ours. Not somebody else’s in-law. Ours.’

‘Howard,’ said Kiki with equal control, ‘please, no ‘‘routines’’. We’re not on stage. I’ve just said I don’t want to talk about this now. I know you heard me.’

Howard gave a little bow.

‘Levi needs money for a cab. If you want to worry about something, worry about that. Don’t worry about the Kippses.’ ‘Kippses?’ called Levi, from somewhere out of sight. ‘Kippses who? Where they at?’

This faux Brooklyn accent belonged to neither Howard nor Kiki, and had only arrived in Levi’s mouth three years earlier, as he turned twelve. Jerome and Zora had been born in England, Levi in America. But all their various American accents seemed, to Howard, in some way artificial – not quite the products of this house of his wife. None, though, was as inexplicable as Levi’s. Brooklyn? The Belseys were located two hundred miles north of Brooklyn. Howard felt very close to commenting on it this morning (he had been warned by his wife not to comment on it), but now Levi appeared from the hallway and disarmed his father with a gappy smile before biting the top off a muffin he held in his hand.


‘Levi,’ said Kiki, ‘honey, I’m interested – do you know who I am? Pay any attention at all to anything that goes on around here? Remember Jerome? Your brother? Jerome no here? Jerome cross big sea to place called England?’

Levi held a pair of sneakers in his hands. These he shook in the direction of his mother’s sarcasm and, scowling, sat down to begin putting them on.

‘So? And what? I know about Kippses? I don’t know nothing about no Kippses.’

‘Jerome – go to school.’

‘Now I’m Jerome too?’

‘Levi – go to school.’

‘Man, why you gotta be all ... I just ahks a question, that’s all, and you gotta be all ...’ Here Levi provided an inconclusive mime that gave no idea of the missing word.

‘Monty Kipps. The man your brother’s been working for in England,’ conceded Kiki wearily. It was interesting to Howard to see how Levi had won this concession, by meeting Kiki’s corrosive irony with its opposite.

‘See?’ said Levi, as if it was only by his efforts that decency and sense could be arrived at. ‘Was that hard?’

‘So is that a letter from Kipps?’ asked Zora, coming back down the stairs and up behind her mother’s shoulder. In this pose, the daughter bent over the mother, they reminded Howard of two of Picasso’s chubby water-carriers. ‘Dad, please, I’ve got to help with the reply this time – we’re going to destroy him. Who’s it for? The Republic?’

‘No. No, it’s nothing to do with that – it’s from Jerome, actually. Getting married,’ said Howard, letting his robe fall open, turning away. He wandered over to the glass doors that looked out on to their garden. ‘To Kipps’s daughter. Apparently it’s funny. Your mother thinks it’s hilarious.’

Excerpted from On Beauty, (c) 2005 Zadie Smith. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Press. All rights reserved.