The Accidental

Description

Winner of the Whitbread Novel of the Year award 2005, and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2005 and the Saltire Award 2005. The Smart family's lacklustre holiday in Norwich is turned upside down when a beguiling stranger called Amber appears, bringing with her love, joy, pain and upheaval. The Smarts try to make sense of their bewildering emotions as Amber tramples over family boundaries and forces them to think about their world and themselves in an entirely new way. The Accidental is at once a mysterious web of secret identities and a ruthlessly honest look at the silent cracks that can develop unnoticed in relationships over time.

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 and her next novel is forthcoming in 2016.

"Astonishing. . . . Vivid and affecting. . . . Wonderfully supple, jazzy." -"The New York Times" "Persistently sparkling pages...of startling and clarifying emotional power. . . . It casts a spell." --"The Atlantic Monthly" "Completely captivating. . . . Thoroughly charming and melodic. . . .Devilishly lovely." --"The Boston Globe" "Beautifully executed. . . . A few pages [in] and you begin to remember how much fun it is to put yourself in the hands of a skilled, majestically confident writer. . . . Delightful." --"The New York Observer" "Brims with wit, humor, and energy." --"The Christian Science Monitor" " Astonishing. . . . Vivid and affecting. . . . Wonderfully supple, jazzy." - "The New York Times" " Persistently sparkling pages...of startling and clarifying emotional power. . . . It casts a spell." -- "The Atlantic Monthly" " Completely captivating. . . . Thoroughly charming and melodic. . . .Devilishly lovely." -- "The Boston Globe" " Beautifully executed. . . . A few pages [in] and you begin to remember how much fun it is to put yourself in the hands of a skilled, majestically confident writer. . . . Delightful." -- "The New York Observer" " Brims with wit, humor, and energy." -- "The Christian Science Monitor" from the United Kingdom: "An outstanding novel . . . Exuberantly inventive . . . Beautifully formed and astringently intelligent . . . It is as good as anyone who has been watching the progress of this talented author could possibly have hoped." -"The Sunday Times" "Funny, sexy, poignant, surprising, playful . . . Although the novel dazzles with the richness of language and ideas, it retains a delicious lightness." -"The Observer" "Spectacular . . . Allusive, ambitious and formally acrobatic . . . Original, restless, formally and morally challenging, [Ali Smith] remains a writer who resists definition." -"The Times Literary Supplement" "Amazing . . . Dazzling . . . Smith is one of our greatest imaginative writers." -"The Scotsman" "Joyous . . . Smith plays dizzying games with her story and language; she bends and buckles her prose, breathes fire into it, lets it cool, swirls it up in unimaginable shapes. This is writing as pure rapture, as giddy delight." -"The Times" "From the Hardcover edition."