Ali Smith
Winner of the Whitbread Award for best novel and a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, ,The Accidental, is the virtuoso new novel by the singularly gifted Ali Smith. Jonathan Safran Foer has called her writing â€œthrilling.â€ Jeanette Winterson has praised her for her â€œstyle, ideas, and punch.â€ Here, in a novel at once profound, playful, and exhilaratingly inventive, she transfixes us with a portrait of a family unraveled by a mysterious visitor.,Amberâ€”thirtysomething and barefootâ€”shows up at the door of the Norfolk cottage that the Smarts are renting for the summer. She talks her way in. She tells nothing but lies. She stays for dinner.,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 sheâ€™s her motherâ€™s friend. Son Magnus, age seventeen, thinks sheâ€™s an angel.,As Amber insinuates herself into the family, the questions of who she is and how sheâ€™s come to be there drop away. Instead, dazzled by her seeming exoticism, the Smarts begin to examine the accidents of their lives through the searing lens of Amberâ€™s perceptions. When Eve finally banishes her from the cottage, Amber disappears from their sight, but notâ€”they discover when they return home to Londonâ€”from their profoundly altered lives.,Fearlessly intelligent and written with an irresistible blend of lyricism and whimsy, ,The Accidental, is a tour de force of literary improvisation that explores the nature of truth, the role of chance, and the transformative power of storytelling.
Fiction,Contemporary,Literary Fiction,Novels,European Literature,British Literature,Literature,21st Century,Literature,Cultural,Scotland,Unfinished,Family
The Accidental