On Beauty - Zadie Smith

Ever since I got into David Lodge in my mid-teens I have had a soft spot for the campus novel, in which academic debate and sexual comedy provide a heady mix. This is a great recent example of the blend, made all the more pleasurable by its explicit debt to E.M. Forster. Only Connect, and all that.

The two feuding families at the heart of the story are well delineated and appealing, and the gradual exposure of their hypocrisies and fallibility rings true. The plotting is neatly done, with some expectations fulfilled and others subverted to marvellously satisfying effect.