"There but for the" starts with the premise of a dinner party guest who gets up in the middle of the meal and quietly goes upstairs and locks himself into the hosts' spare room -- for months. A surprisingly warm-hearted story about how difficult it is to connect, to recognize how deeply we are connected, and the transformative magic that happens when we do.

"Imagine if all the civilizations in the past had not known to have the imagination to look up at the sun and the moon and the stars and work out that things were connected, that those things right in front of their eyes could be connected to time and to what times is and how it works." -p. 355

Smith does a marvelous job of showing the countless, sparkling, half-hidden, sometimes painful filaments that connect seemingly disparate people. Though the hosts of the dinner party had never met their new housemate before ("A stranger is living in our house against our will"), it becomes clear that there are profound, unconscious ties between these people. The idea of a stranger living in one's house "against one's will" is incredibly evocative. What Smith suggests to me is that below the surface of our lives there is an open invitation to the unknown and a recognition of the ways in which the deepest parts of ourselves are often strange to us -- and that we spend our lives alternating between running away and trying to connect, to come close, to welcome what is most deeply buried, often resented, largely feared. But when we accept and open up to this stranger inside us, the most incredible gifts are inevitably unleashed.

I wasn't crazy about all of the narrative voices (the poetic, punning, disjointed, hyper-clever style used to depict the child Brooke, in the final section, often made me skim -- it was somewhat annoying) -- but I nevertheless enjoyed this book very much as a whole. Easily my favourite of Ali Smith's works, by a long shot. Her usual stylistic pyrotechnics felt like the were really working in service to the heart of the story (as opposed to something else, e.g. maybe a way of coping with or distancing oneself from emotion). Overall, Smith feels much kinder, more open and forgiving as a writer than in her earlier books.

The Thames is brown and green today. It changes what it is every day. No: every minute. Every second. It is a different possible river every second, and imagine all the people under the water walking across to the other side and back to this side in the tunnel right now, because under the surface there is a whole other thing always happening.
-p.356

(from my blog post: [...])

This is one of my all time favourite novels and it actually made me start a reading "salon" group in 2003. And I hate reading groups! I was just so excited to share this book with as many people as possible. Middlesex is a multi-layered, sprawling cosmos of a story. Eugenides is as good at tiny details, like the subtle social cues in a group of suburban teenage girls, as he is at conveying the complexity of civil war in Asia Minor and race riots in 1960's Detroit. It is sexy, thought-provoking and wildly original. You can luxuriate in the rich detail or tear through it in the bath while your toes go pruney, because it is such a fantastic page-turner. It's one of those books that leaves you bereft when you get to the last page because you just want it to go on and on. I read this when it came out and for the next year I gave it to just about everyone I knew as a birthday present.

Middlesex is the perfect place to be on a blustery fall afternoon.

An incredibly promising debut. Birrell's stories have an understated charm and intelligence that linger long after you finish them. The situations the characters find themselves are rarely exceptional or even worthy of lenghty descriptions here: this young author's talent lies in the lightnening surprise of her turns of phrase, her unusual similes and the palpable empathy she has for her characters. This is a writer to watch. I was thrilled to see Heather Birrell win the Journey Prize this year. Congratulations!

If you have just bought "After Dark," I wish you bon appetit. When you are finished the newest Murakami sensation, however, you must go back to this earlier, even more incredible work. All the haunting tropes of any good Murakami story are there (cooking, old jazz, cats, earlobes, cooking, missing people, detached sex and good coffee), but in their most distilled, brilliantly rendered form. The world of the Wind-Up Bird is haunting, confusing, dreamlike and wry. It is a rip-roaringly quiet story that meanders towards the end, but keeps you turning pages nontheless. There is a prolonged torture scene that may or may not take place at the bottom of a well, or is it the plains of Mongolia? An intriguing woman who may or may not be someone's missing wife keeps calling to have phone sex. A tornado occurs. You learn something about the fall of the Roman empire. You are often unsure where you are or why things are happening, but you keep turning pages because Murakami has cast such a spell on you and his strange world is as compelling as any soap opera. A fantastic read, in all senses of the word.

This is one of my all time favourite novels and it actually made me start a reading "salon" group in 2003. And I hate reading groups! I was just so excited to share this book with as many people as possible. Middlesex is a multi-layered, sprawling cosmos of a story. Eugenides is as good at tiny details, like the subtle social cues in a group of suburban teenage girls, as he is at conveying the complexity of civil war in Asia Minor and race riots in 1960's Detroit. It is sexy, thought-provoking and wildly original. You can luxuriate in the rich detail or tear through it in the bath while your toes go pruney, because it is such a fantastic page-turner. It's one of those books that leaves you bereft when you get to the last page because you just want it to go on and on. I read this when it came out and for the next year I gave it to just about everyone I knew as a birthday present... well, except for the people in my reading group who all bought their own copies. : )

Middlesex is the perfect place to be on a sultry summer afternoon.

i cannot stop playing this brilliant cd. everyone i play it for runs out to buy it, then they, too, cannot stop playing this brilliant cd.
that voice, that voice...
the only disappointing moment i've had with "back to black" was when i opened the liner note booklet and realised that she really *isn't* a 73 year-old 200 pound black woman who was a huge star for 6 months in 1959, then wrongfully forgotten only to be resuscitated in 2007 to huge acclaim. despite the fact that she is only a 23 year-old anoxeric-looking middle class white girlie, amy reaches into your guts, twists them around, makes you laugh, make you dance, haunts you and leaves you wanting more.
why are there only 10 songs on this dazzling cd? why is frank (her previous release) nowhere as good as this? (mark ronson, the producer, seems to be a crucial part of the equation...check out her brilliant cover of "Valerie" on his new disc.)
more! more! more!
BUY this.
seriously.

utterly compelling, charming, sad and humourous. compelled to keep reading,i stayed in my bath until i was completely pruney, till i reached the very last page. it was well worth emptying the hot water tank.

while i have enjoyed her comic strip over the years, bechdel is clearly a much more talented, nuanced artist than "Dykes to Watch Out For" would indicate, both in terms of her visual acumen and her subtle use of structure and dialogue to capture the vagaries of memory and grief.

highly recommended.

this was a marvelous book. i was immediately sucked into gibb's narrative universe, from the sensational description of the hyaena sunrise on the first page. this is an author hitting her stride. i found her first two books claustrophobic and limited-feeling in scope.

this book breathed. the prose is both elegant and economical. the balance of romance and sobriety was excellent. once you start this story, you will find it hard to put it down.

i had stopped writing for 5 years and when i finished "Sweetness" i was so excited about storytelling that it somehow undid the block. i started writing again.

thank you, camilla gibb.