The Accidental: Amazon.ca: Ali Smith: Books

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First Sentence
My mother began me one evening in 1968 on a table in the caf� of the town's only cinema. Read the first page

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Amazon.com: 3.2 out of 5 stars (71 customer reviews)

38 of 44 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Five stories for the price of one, Jan 19 2006

By K. L. Cotugno - Published on Amazon.com

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This review is from: The Accidental: A novel (Hardcover)

There are so many pleasures to be found in this skillfully crafted book. Whether it is the characters' names, their hidden perceptions, the setup, or the interior monologue of the catalyctic Amber, the only story told in first person. Initially, the four "Smarts" are so wrapped up in their individual dramas, that they barely intersect. Many issues of the day are addressed, some of which don't become apparent until after the book has been closed. The reader keeps returning to passages, wondering how this or that was missed the first time around, but realizing that until the entire picture has been presented, it would be impossible to isolate a revelation. To say more would ruin new readers' experience of taking this journey for themselves. It provided more fun than I've had in a long time with a book.

33 of 40 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A New View, Jan 18 2006

By Eric Anderson - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: The Accidental: A novel (Hardcover)

Surprise and chance have a way of intrusively wedging a new perspective into people's lives. The four members of the Smart family seem in particular need of just such an unexpected element during their holiday in the Norfolk countryside. All of them are on the brink of a major crisis in their lives, but most of them are carefully avoiding the reality of their situations. At their idyllic getaway which the daughter Astrid views as an "unhygienic dump" they receive an unexpected visitor who brashly delivers a new point of view. From beginning, middle to end they are shaken into a new understanding of the world.

This is an intelligent, carefully structured novel that is both funny and illuminating. A chance trip to watch the movie Love Actually leads Magnus, the confused young son of the family to ruminate on Plato's ideas about Belief and Illusion. Ali Smith is able to incorporate myth and philosophy into her wry look at ordinary modern life in a way that produces an entirely fresh way of seeing. From the minute details of life to the war in Iraq playing in the background, the methods we use to understand things are exposed and questioned. Whether seeing reality through the filter of Astrid's camera lens or the mathematical equations of Magnus, the way we view the world is scrupulously examined. But the characters have a sense that truth is still hidden from them leading them to use new tools to examine it. Ali Smith bravely experiments with language and the form of the novel to re-view life. If her technique is viewed by some as placing literary panache over essential meaning then Smith seems to answer this through her character the novelist Eve who responds, "It's not a gimmick. Every question has an answer." Smith cleverly constructs different paths to bring us to new answers.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A critical favourite.....but the rest of us aren't so sure !, July 19 2006

By Reader from Singapore - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: The Accidental: A novel (Hardcover)

Ali Smith's Whitbread Prize winning "The Accidental" has drawn a mixed bag of reactions, polarizing opinions with critics roughly standing on one side and readers on the other side. The critics seem to love the book for its quirky post-modernist homage to stream-of-consciousness styling and its unusual treatment of "anomie", an aberration in the human condition that in the case of the Smart family has reduced its members to emotionally disassociated individuals living under the same roof. The book may be awfully clever for all the right writer-ly reasons, but how many readers give two hoots when they can't see the pay off in navigating past thickets of rambling prose to discover the fate of four, maybe five, not very likeable people....including one who may be "imaginary" after all or worse a mere fictional device !

Well, I confess that my feelings vacillated wildly between curious enthusiasm and downright frustration when reading the book. Amber was conceived in a cinema. That much we know....trouble is, that's also as much as we'll ever know about her. Each chapter is dedicated by turns to a "family" character. There's Michael the philandering husband/stepfather, Eve the writer-in-selfdenial wife/mother, Magnus the mixed up suicidal teenage son and Astrid the camera-obsessed changeling of a daughter. The few pages devoted to Amber, the catalyst for the Smarts' miraculous transformation, are more like dividers, consisting of short bursts of social, pop cultural and cinematic history. So who's Amber, why does she affect each member of the Smart family the way she does and what's her motive ? Good questions, but we don't get any answers, so we'd better figure them out for ourselves, mustn't we ? I for one am inclined to see Amber as a not quite human character, an angel sent anonymously to jolt the Smarts out of their catatonic state and restore them to...what I don't quite know.

As long as Amber is around causing havoc or turning the lives of the Smarts inside out, you can feel the current's undertow and are encouraged to persevere. But when Eve calls Amber's bluff and throws her out of the household, the story loses steam and begins to stagnate. Finally, we are left with the hint that life is a circle when Eve finds herself potentially in Amber's position with another family but this is as much a mystery to me as the rest of the story. Maybe, Smith wants us to ask, "Will Eve go the same way as Amber ?"

The critics may be effusive in their praise for "The Accidental" but I suspect the rest of us are just going to have to take it on faith that "they know better than us" and be content with reading an award winning book that's not very accessible or entertaining.

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