The Accidental

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She literally chances into their lives, with everyone believing she is there for a different reason -- Michael thinks she's there to interview Eva; Eva thinks she's one of his student-lovers, etc.

The only problem with the brilliance of Astrid as a fictional creation is that it rather makes you wish that the whole novel was hers. Which is not to say that the other characters are exactly bland, only that they don't radiate the same sense of discovery. (...) The Accidental has an infectious sense of fun and invention. The story goes through some surprising reversals and arrives at a satisfying conclusion, which is also a beginning. But afterwards, it's the child's voice you remember: it is Astrid's book." - Steven Poole, The Guardian S)pellbinding ..... Though The Accidental is not a conventionally funny novel, readers may find themselves laughing -- in surprise and delight -- at the way Smith takes a literary trope and riffs on it until she's turned it inside out, the way a great jazz musician might." - Jeff Turrentine, The Washington Post Anyway, whatever, they made the story seem too contrived and dull. None of the characters were engaging nor did they warrant any sympathy, empathy or any other kind of pathy. A prime example being Dr Michael Smart, all round nauseating self obsessed academic with a penchant for thinking and talking about himself in the third person and for bedding his students. Note - the two activities need not be mutually exclusive for the tedious Dr Smart. That said, I can vouch that he is a good representative mash-up of many male academics that I have known and not loved. O.K., so she borrowed the plot, such as it is, from a Pasolini movie -- Teorema (1968), with an unforgettable Terence Stamp in the lead role -- and the novel is almost too cleverly constructed, too pleased with its own tidy symmetries. But those are the only quibbles I’ve come up with, so I’ll just blurt it out: Ali Smith’s The Accidental, which two weeks ago won Britain’s Whitbread Novel of the Year award, is a delightful book, a satire that’s playful but not cuddly, tart but not bitter, thoughtful but not heavy." - Adam Begley, The New York Observer The Accidental may claim the record for time spent in my reading queue - I bought it over five years ago, and finally got around to reading it this weekend. When I bought it, it had already generated quite a buzz - nominated (unsuccessfully) for the Booker prize, winning the Whitbread. I wasn't sure what to expect.Ali Smith has yet to disappoint me and I’m so thrilled about that! The Accidental was an absolute joy to read, and with the exception of one tiny chapter (I had the same issue with Hotel World), it was perfection. The chapter in question was written in verse and I don’t get on with poetry. One day, she finds a beautiful letter that her father wrote to her mother when they were still courting each other. This seems to have made her realize that their family was once a happy one. When the father was not yet having extra-marital affairs with his students, the son hasn't been the cause of his classmate suicide and the mother hasn't lost touch of the reality in her life. The reason why I said this is that towards the end when Astrid kisses her mother, "Eve was moved beyond believe by the kiss." It reminded me that we sometimes all get to busy with our everyday tasks and we forget kissing and hugging our loved ones. This is kind of a cliche but true. This novel was shortlisted in the 2005 Booker. This and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go lost to John Banville's The Sea. I can't believe it! Aus den wechselnden, mit großem Einfühlungsvermögen dargestellten Innenperspektiven der Smarts entwirft die Autorin dabei allmählich das Bild eines leeren Raums, in dem sich das soziale Ideal der Familie zu verflüchtigen scheint und sich als ähnlich untaugliches Wahrnehmungsmodell erweist wie die mutmaßlich sinnstiftenden Systeme, in denen die Figuren ihre individuellen Welten eingerichtet haben." - Thomas David, Die Zeit

With her sending up of linear forms, her undermining of beginnings, her use of in-between locations, her interest in wanderers and vagrants and accidental and premature death, her reliance on familiar motifs like stopped watches, Smith seems always to be telling versions of the same story. Things do not progress neatly; they circle and return. But the writing is fresh and unexpected each time." - Eleanor Birne, London Review of Books The mysterious fifth character -- or fifth column -- is "Amber MacDonald" aka "Alhambra," (or, later, mysteriously, "Catherine Masson"). We meet her mainly through her increasingly outrageous, even criminal, encounters with each family member. The ironic tension becomes very uncomfortable, as it clear early on (but only to the reader) that she's a highly skilled con artist who regards Eve and Michael as disgustingly easy marks. She even claims to be descended directly from the MacDonalds of Glencoe** and quotes in Gaelic, then translates, a saying: "Be sure you know who you are letting into your home before you let them in" -- a warning the Smarts ignore. Even her names -- Amber (Yellow) and her birth name, Alhambra (Red), after an old local theatre where she was supposedly conceived, are warning lights. But all the hints Amber throws out go right over the self-absorbed parents' heads. The other approach is to believe that it all actually happened, that despite melding truth & fiction for a living; Eve Smart couldn't see through the totally made up surface of Amber/Alhambra's persona & that in the end, Amber used another pseudonym, this time around, she called herself Eve & that the American family was in for a Smart-like misadventure— they were gonna lose all the doorknobs, carpets, & all their pretty horses too! Set in 2003, the novel consists of three parts: "The Beginning," "Middle" and "The End". Each part contains four separate narrations, one focusing on each member of the Smart family: Eve, the mother, Michael, her husband, Astrid (12) and Magnus (17), two children of Eve's from a previous marriage (to Adam Berenski). Opening and closing the novel, and between each part, we have four sections of first-person narration from 'Alhambra' – who we can assume is Amber, the Smarts' uninvited house-guest.What effects does Smith create by telling the story through each family member’s point of view? How would the novel have been different if told through a single omniscient narrator? Eva has achieved some success with a series of books called the Genuine Article Series -- "autobiotruefictinterviews", written in question-and-answer form. The only problem with the brilliance of Astrid as a fictional creation is that it rather makes you wish that the whole novel was hers. Which is not to say that the other characters are exactly bland, only that they don't radiate the same sense of discovery. Remembering Bergman’s films, Eve asks: “Did dark times naturally result in dark art?” [p. 178]. Do they? Is The Accidental itself a dark novel about a dark time? If so, how so?