LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
This review is provided by bookgroup.info.
The setting is Norfolk in the long hot summer of 2003. The Smart family are staying in a miserable cottage for the holidays while the war in Iraq rumbles in the background.
The story is told in turn from the point of view of the four family members; Astrid a bright, video camera wielding, twelve year old girl; Magnus her seventeen year old brother, traumatised by the suicide of a bullied classmate for which he feels partly responsible; Eve the children’s mother, a writer with writer’s block, and Michael their lecherous, lecturer step-father.
If it all sounds rather tediously familiar so far but don’t despair. Events take a turn when a mysterious blonde female stranger infiltrates their lives. But who is Amber? Eve supposes she’s one of Michael’s lovers. Michael supposes she’s come to interview Eve and the kids are just glad there’s someone else there to relieve the tedium. No-one challenges her appearance at the house and all four are seduced by her and ultimately forced to re-examine their lives.
This is just the story. The book’s tour de force is Ali Smith’s use of language. She is clever, funny and completely unpretentious. I particularly like the (totally believable) voice of twelve year old Astrid:
“They’re all asleep. Nobody knows she is awake. Nobody is any the wiser. Any the Wiser sounds like a character from ancient history. Astrid in the year 1003BC (Before Celebrity) goes to the woods where Any the Wiser………” and so it goes on as we enter Astrid’s stream of consciousness.
This is the contemporary novel at its best - rich and satisfying.
The Lovereading view...
The engrossing tale of a middle-class family and the events that unfold when a stranger steps into their midst. Amber's arrival changes the family's lives dramatically as she quickly bonds with the Smarts, bewitching them all. Smith's writing is fantastic, capturing the voices of all the characters superbly, but especially that of the adolescent Astrid who steals the show. On the Orange Fiction Prize 2006 short list and utterly compelling.
LoveReading
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The Accidental Synopsis
14 year old Astrid is spending the summer with her family in a substandard holiday home in a substandard town in Norfolk, and she knows for sure nothing’s going to happen there all substandard summer. So she’s started filming the dawn breaking each morning on her Sony digital camera.
Magnus, Astrid’s older brother, has been pulled out of the upper-sixth early. He used to be form-captain, sickeningly excited about things like calculus, and how plants grow. Now he lies face down on the floor in his room like a beached whale. What happened? One month ago he and two friends took a picture of a lower-sixth girl’s head, fixed it onto another body, and sent it round everyone’s email, then she killed herself.
Dr Michael Smart lectures in English Literature at a London university. Though spending the summer in Norfolk, he’s popping down to London, marking work, checking exam results etc, and secretly meeting his current special pupil, the alarmingly ambitious Philippa Knott.
Eve chose the Norfolk holiday home for its ‘elegant summerhouse with internet connection point’ where she can get on with researching and writing her next book. But the advert turned out to be a fraud, the summerhouse is more of a shed really. But then Eve’s a bit of a fraud too. She hasn’t written a word all summer.
Amber just arrived one day. Eve assumed she was Michael’s student, Michael thought she knew Eve. Magnus thought she was an angel, sent to save him. Astrid thought that if Amber were a cartoon character, she would have been a superheroine, but also that she is definitely insane. And then Amber just didn’t leave…
About This Edition
ISBN: |
9780141010397 |
Publication date: |
6th April 2006 |
Author: |
Ali Smith |
Publisher: |
Penguin Books Ltd |
Format: |
Paperback (b Format) |
Pagination: |
320 pages |
Primary Genre |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction
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Recommendations: |
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Author
About Ali Smith
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of Free Love and Other Stories, Like, Other Stories and Other Stories, Hotel World, The Whole Story and Other Stories, The Accidental, Girl Meets Boy, The First Person and Other Stories, There but for the, Artful, How to be both, and Public Library and other stories. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize and The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Baileys Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Folio Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.
More About Ali Smith