Jan’s Place

A sequel to “A Girl Named Zippy,” these autobiographical sketches have a rambling, unedited quality that disappointed me in comparison with her other work. I consider Kimmell a writer to watch, mainly for her flawed but beautiful “The Solace of Leaving Early,” one of the most poetic novels I have read recently. “Zippy” was also a pleasure, and some of its freshness remains here, but the stories in “She Got Up Off the Couch” seem meaningless and second-string too often. There are several fascinating stories running through here, but they do not get enough attention.

She describes her father from a more adult perspective, viewing him as the iron-willed lawgiver for the family but a law unto himself elsewhere. Why does this lawless man become a police officer and finally leave his family to take up with a very middle class woman and a house full of antiques? There is something wrong with this picture, and a very interesting story might be told to describe what it is. Was the rift ever bridged with his son, law-abiding but just as iron-willed as his father, who leaves home and absents himself from the family? The story of Zippy’s mother, who got up off the couch in a remarkable transformation, is the heart of the book, but we learn little about how she liked her new life as a teacher or dealt with her husband’s betrayel. Perhaps these complaints are unjustified in the face of the viewpoint of a young girl that the story takes, but the book seems to sing most when some adult perspective slips in, and I would have liked more of it and fewer of the sleepover parties and insignificant events. The book seems just slightly self-indulgent, and the material is there for it to be much more.

“On Beauty” is the best novel I have read by Zadie Smith to date. I found her first novel, “White Teeth,” too hyperactive, but she has slowed down and sharpened her characters into a likable and interesting mix — the operative word with Smith, who tosses her varied characters together with enthusiasm and an eye for revealing detail. Her charm lies in an ability to get inside a wide range of characters with convincing and affectionate portrayals. She describes the thoughts of Levi, a young man who blithely denies his middle-class background and passes himself off as a gansta, as easily as his sister Zora, a brash young woman of great personality who nevertheless feels with typical adolescent angst that she has no core. I loved a brief portrayal of a university dean whose people skills consist of finding the moment when he moves to the front of his desk, perches on the corner and drapes one long leg over another. That rather acid and amusing sketch is balanced by a glimpse of his true love: words and their intricate histories. Smith throws her net wide, and writes from the point of view of many characters. Most are drawn well and with beautiful detail, but some of the sketches are unfinished or dropped. (One, of a woman in an art class, seems completely superfluous).

Smith is a natural writer, but she is not a natural crafter of plots. Her real strength is small tales with sharp character observation, but the plot her tales hang on is little more than a multi-cultural soap opera. She won’t become a first-rank writer, in my opinion, until she can reign in her tendency to use cheap plot devices. In this novel, which centers around a brief affair that throws a family into turmoil, two must be better than one, and the fallen husband does it again just when his marriage is beginning to heal. The second affair serves Smith’s interweaving of two very different families, but seems highly implausible.

The great pleasure of reading Smith is being wrapped in her forgiving nature and affectionate outlook on people. “On Beauty” turns a gentle eye wherever it looks. I can picture the author smiling over her creation, whispering “Everything’s all right,” a soothing and comfortable voice, but one at odds with her subject of race and racism in many forms. Her viewpoint is distinctive and refreshing, but I wonder if she becomes, to her readers, an excuse to not look too deeply, a sort of feel-good dip into Racism Lite. “On Beauty” soothes and points out the good in people, rare in the subject of racism but perhaps too shallow to endure in your heart. I believe that Smith could keep her affectionate outlook, but push deeper and become a far better writer.