The Accidental
By Ali Smith
(Anchor, Paperback, 9781400032181, 320pp.)
Publication Date: April 10, 2007
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook
Categories: Literary
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The Accidental is the dizzyingly entertaining, wickedly humorous story of a mysterious stranger whose sudden appearance during a family’s summer holiday transforms four variously unhappy people. Each of the Smarts–parents Eve and Michael, son Magnus, and the youngest, daughter Astrid–encounter Amber in his or her own solipsistic way, but somehow her presence allows them to se their lives (and their life together) in a new light. Smith’s exhilarating facility with language, her narrative freedom, and her chromatic wordplay propel the novel to its startling, wonderfully enigmatic conclusion.Ali Smith’s acclaimed novel won the prestigious Whitbread Award and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
ALI SMITH is the author of six works of fiction, including the novel Hotel World, which was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize in 2001 and won the Encore Award and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award in 2002. Her story collections include Free Love, which won the Saltire First Book Award and a Scottish Arts Council Award, and The Whole Story and Other Stories. Born in Inverness, Scotland, in 1962, Smith now lives in Cambridge, England.
“Astonishing. . . . Vivid and affecting. . . . Wonderfully supple, jazzy.” –The New York Times“Persistently sparkling pages...of startling and clarifying emotional power. . . . It casts a spell.” —The Atlantic Monthly“Completely captivating. . . . Thoroughly charming and melodic. . . .Devilishly lovely.” —The Boston Globe“Beautifully executed. . . . A few pages [in] and you begin to remember how much fun it is to put yourself in the hands of a skilled, majestically confident writer. . . . Delightful.” —The New York Observer“Brims with wit, humor, and energy.” —The Christian Science Monitor
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