The Accidental

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And what of that mysterious stranger? The enigmatic Amber arrives Chez Smart and moves in, yet no one in the family is quite up to admitting they have no idea who she is or how she found them. Her past feels irrelevant to the story, yet the stream-of-consciousness snippets indicate she was born in a movie theatre called Alhambra some three decades prior. She seems conjured out of legend, an imp, a sprite, beautiful and irreverent and frankly, rather mean-spirited and of questionable moral judgment. She drills under the skin of each family member, dragging them out of their emotional malaise and entrancing each before blowing the nuclear family to bits, figuratively speaking. Far be it from me, however, to give anything away. What is it with Ali Smith?! I want to hold her shoulders and give her a good shake, twice. How she fooled me! How she wrote this very clever book! Funny, sexy, poignant, surprising, playful . . . Although the novel dazzles with the richness of language and ideas, it retains a delicious lightness." – The Observer.

Internal struggle/realization? - Yes Struggle over - actions leading to death of someone Is this an adult or child's book? - Adult or Young Adult Book I didn't enjoy reading it and to say I found the story a pointless and unrewarding read is probably an understatement. The book seemed to be nothing more than a series of poorly strung together literary devices... or maybe it was a vehicle for the trundling out of a series of literary devices to show how many literary devices there are.

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Spectacular . . . Allusive, ambitious and formally acrobatic . . . Original, restless, formally and morally challenging, [Ali Smith] remains a writer who resists definition." - The Times Literary Supplement. Like the musical notation with which the novel shares a name, the Buñuelian absurdity at the heart of The Accidental lifts the tale a step sharp from domestic realism (the discretions of the bourgeoisie indeed !). What's more, it demands that the reader make decisions." - Jessica Winter, The Village Voice Here it is, Ali Smith’s first full-length novel, and it is as good as anyone who has been watching the progress of this talented author could possibly have hoped. (...) Smith’s version of this archetypal fable is less mystical than Pasolini’s, but funnier. (...) Smith has written a proper novel with a beginning, a middle and an end, but turned it into an exuberantly inventive series of variations. At her beginning, each character is facing some kind of dead end. By the end, everything, including the story of the stranger on the doorstep, is ready to begin again. And in the middle is a fable as beautifully formed and as astringently intelligent as her barefoot delinquent angel." - Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Sunday Times

How does Smith capture the angst of early adolescence so vividly in the character of Astrid? What kind of girl is she? What are her most engaging eccentricities? Why does she feel so casually hostile toward the rest of her family? Why is she so captivated by Amber? a b Smith, Ali (2005). The Accidental. ISBN 978-0-241-14190-8 . Retrieved 19 April 2008. The Accidental. The stranger who arrives in mysterious circumstances and turns a household on its ear may be familiar literary trope, but Ali Smith does it with such panache and vivacity, the familiar becomes fresh and revelatory.After Amber's bold performance, the conciliatory conclusion (...) disappoints. Yet Ms. Smith's formal achievements make her required reading for serious student's of last year's fiction. (...) Her stream of consciousness is narrow, but it is swift and deep." - Benjamin Lytal, The New York Sun Michael is a university lecturer in English literature and has regular affairs with his female students. Eva seems to be aware of this. Smith's work has been the subject of critical acclaim from the publication of her first Saltire award-winning collection of stories, Free Love and Other Stories, in 1995. She has since been shortlisted for the Booker and the Orange prizes for both her second novel, Hotel World, and her third, The Accidental, for which she received the 2005 Whitbread novel award. Her fondness for the grandscale and her employment of shifting perspectives, formal risk-taking and rich language all mark Smith out as a "literary" writer, but her confident, inventive tales also display a humour which lightens the ambitious themes she covers. Her penchant for wordplay and the pleasure she takes in the outlandish and idiosyncratic have, however, given rise to the criticism that she can on occasion stray a little too far into the arch. Recommended works

Eve Smart, the author of a best-selling series of biographical reconstructions, thinks Amber is a student with whom her husband, Michael, is sleeping. Michael, an English professor, knows only that her car broke down. Daughter Astrid, age twelve, thinks she’s her mother’s friend. Son Magnus, age seventeen, thinks she’s an angel. The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of Ali Smith’s extraordinary novel, The Accidental, winner of Britain’s prestigious Whitbread award. Introduction The story is of a dysfunctional London family in summer residence in a rural town in Norfolk, with sections alternately told from the minds of an adult couple, Michael and Eve, and their kids, twelve-year old Astrid and seventeen-year old Magnus. Astrid is largely ignored by her parents and lives in a vibrant fantasy life and projects involving documenting the world with her videocam. Magnus is in a horrible limbo of probation pending investigation of his role in internet bullying of a girl that led to her suicide. Eve is enjoying success as a writer of a series based on ordinary real people who died in World War 2, whom she renders in a fictional rewrite of the life they might had lived. Michael is a professor of Victorian literature, failed poet, and perpetual philanderer targeting his students.

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The critic John Sutherland also comments on the novel's "remarkable narrative obliquity". [9] He notes also the intertextual and "intergeneric" nature of the book, the way in which it references the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1968 film Teorema in which, likewise, "a mysterious, beautiful stranger [...] arrives from nowhere into a family and, simply by virtue of what he is, destroys their merely 'theoretic' coherence". [9] Sutherland also stresses the ways in which Amber is "the offspring of cinema". [9] Reception [ edit ] The third first-person narration from Alhambra follows, which is much the same as the second. We then have "The End", which takes us to the Smart home once they return from holiday. The house has been emptied of all possessions – we must assume, as the family do, by Amber – leaving nothing but the answering machine, which contains messages forcing Magnus, Michael and Eve to face up to their past. Magnus and Astrid seem freed and excited by the experience of losing their possessions, their past – Michael also seems to find some redemption. Eve, however, runs away from the family, embarking on a round-the-world tour – eventually ending up in America, where she goes in search of her old family home. "The End" ends, ominously, with Eve seeming to take up Amber's mantle, arriving at someone's house as an uninvited guest. The book then finishes with a short section from Alhambra, reinforcing her connection to the cinema.

Completely captivating. . . . Thoroughly charming and melodic. . . .Devilishly lovely.”— The Boston Globe After graduating from Aberdeen University, Smith went to Cambridge to study for her doctorate. Other jobs Compared to "The Sea", this book's storytelling is very innovative. Brilliantly fresh. My first Ali Smith and I thought I was reading the 21st century equivalent of my favorite James Joyce. The first half is alienating because it basically uses stream-of-consciousness with the main characters having their own POVs per chapter and Smith used terms and events that are basically known probably to people in England except when she used contemporary world-known lines from movies, e.g., "Love Actually" or songs, e.g., Streisand's "Love, soft as an easy chair". Then I saw myself singing while trying to figure out what was the book was trying to tell me. But I love it for its newness. I mean, Smith went everywhere with her narration especially in the first part, The Beginning. Then the plot started to take shape in the second part, The Middle before she finally tied all the loose ends and made herself clear in the last part called The End. On the criticism that the girl Amber's role seemed not to make sense, I think her role was just to let the family members realize their true selves. Thing is, I got most of her books & would like to completionize them but I don't want more of the same. Ali Smith is a gay writer & no problem with that but it gets on my nerves the way her straight female characters respond to overtures from another female— as if a world of (better) unexplored possibilities opens up before them! As if being gay was a lifestyle choice & not an embedded fact of one's biological makeup.Who is Amber? Is she a con artist, a pathological liar, a psychic, a soothsayer, a malevolent force of nature, a witch, an angel? What profound effects, good and bad, does she have on each member of the Smart family? The Smart family are dysfunctional. Astrid only views life through her handheld camera, her brother Magnus is suicidal, the half father, lecturer, Michael sleeps with his students and the mother, Eve is a best-selling author who superficial in all ways. Each chapter is about these protagonists and is told through their eyes.