The Accidental

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She was a lecturer at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow until she retired after contracting chronic fatigue syndrome, to concentrate on writing books. In a mixed review by 'Bookslut,' Eoin Cunningham wrote " The Accidental ends up more an exercise in cleverness than a story. Magnus now feels very remorseful and spends much of the day in bed, only coming downstairs to collect his meals, which he takes up to his room.

Here, too, the lives of Eve, Michael, Magnus and Astrid will never be the same after Amber's visitation. 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. While the others' complicated lives involve so many lies, Amber refreshingly says and does as she pleases. Into this emotional tinderbox comes the bright flame of Amber MacDonald, a barefoot woman in her thirties who is both an outrageous liar and an outrageous truth-teller.

If Smith's style with the short story has inspired you to explore more contemporary work in this neglected format, try Jackie Kay, Grace Paley and Rebecca Brown. She seems conjured out of legend, an imp, a sprite, beautiful and irreverent and frankly, rather mean-spirited and of questionable moral judgment. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. The chairs on the tables stuck their legs into the air; the scatters of cake crumbs underneath waited passive in the carpet for the vacuum cleaner nozzle.

The political warfare in the Cleves family is rather too starkly laid out, and the novel can become earnestly didactic. If you aren't swept away by Smith's undoubted way with words, and you rely on the bones of the story itself, you will be disappointed. The Accidental comes across at times as a bit arch, a bit glib, and like Smith is performing for an audience, whereas her later novels are more welcoming. They lurk, pallidly hibernating, inside fortune cookies and Christmas crackers; the groan is the pun’s appropriate unit of appreciation. We at Penguin Random House Australia acknowledge that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the Traditional Custodians and the first storytellers of the lands on which we live and work.Coming home from their vacation -- once they've rid themselves of Amber -- they are given an opportunity to for a fresh start (a rather startling opportunity -- blank slate fresh, in some (but only some) respects).

Is Smith drawn to creating wordy, precocious characters because she is so fond of puns, or do her intelligent characters naturally lead their author toward such wordplay?Since that calamitous referendum, in June, 2016, Smith has quickly published two novels, “ Autumn,” in October of that year, and now “ Winter” (Pantheon), the second of a projected seasonal quartet. And much of the comedy and the fundamental cheerfulness in Smith’s work has to do, I think, with the figurative consolations the pun embodies: that life is generative, and that, even as things split apart, they can be brought together.

Among much amusing word-play throughout the novel are the reactions to Amber's straight-faced truths, as when she leads Magnus down to dinner: "I found him in the bathroom trying to hang himself, she said. At one point he even decides he’s going to pick the prettiest checkout girl in a supermarket and sleep with her: an hour later he implausibly achieves his ambition in the back of his car while she’s on lunchbreak.Her story collections include Free Love, which won the Saltire Society Scottish First Award, a Scottish First Book Award, and a Scottish Arts Council Award, and The Whole Story and Other Stories.