On Beauty was more fun than I expected it to be, on my second attempt at reading it. The cover blurb describes it as a “comic novel”, which I don’t think does it any favours at all, because whilst it is beautifully observed* and deftly plotted, one thing it isn’t is all that funny. But it made me want to see what she does next, which is a better review than it sounds.

*Thanks to my days in a tiny corner of a big newspaper, I cannot type the word “observed” without giving it an extra “r” – “observerd”. Likewise, I always initially add an involuntary “ian” to the end of the word “guard”. I just did both things while I was typing this.