stars. An interesting, original novel about the unravelling of a family. The father, Michael, a literature teacher, has a number of affairs with his students. Eve, his wife, is an author who knows about Michael’s affairs. Magnus, the son, is 15 years old and has been suspended from his school for unethically and immorally manipulating the images of a fellow school student, a girl. The girl commits suicide and the parents want the school to take action. Astrid, the 12 year old daughter, is not very communicative. One thing I found odd was that “outsider character” Amber was an adult – and I think the subsequent implications for her relationship with Michael did not work well, with Michael’s chapters reading like a teenage fantasy. Smith is stronger I think when her outsider is a child – it is perhaps interesting that the Astrid characters are the strongest here. It's a revealing detail that the daughter Astrid's first impressions of Amber are the truthful ones, later you see different family members seeing her as "angelic," "beautiful," & so on. 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).

I love how it's broken up into 3 sections (the beginning, the middle and the end). I love how the chapters start, as if they are 1/2 of a missing thought. I love everything about this book, although I'll be the first to admit sometimes Ali Smith tries a bit too hard to be what I'd call "elusively intellectual" in her writing style. But I can admire the effort and her imagination, definitely. Still, Amber is only a catalyst: the mess that is the Smart family is, for the most part, their own doing. But I did get a little confused at some points. The whole book is about story telling and it gets quite metaphorical at times. But as a whole it is quite an interesting read with many layers to it.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 “thrilling.” Jeanette Winterson has praised her for her “style, ideas, and punch.” 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. Funny, sexy, poignant, surprising, playful . . . Although the novel dazzles with the richness of language and ideas, it retains a delicious lightness." – The Observer. Who is Amber? Is she a con artist, a pathological liar, a psychic, a soothsayer, a malevolent force of nature, a witch, an angel? What profound effects, good and bad, does she have on each member of the Smart family?

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. Knowing none of the Smarts, she simply walks into their cottage and their lives and stays long enough to explode the thin veneer of normalcy the family has constructed to keep it going. Eve thinks she is one of Michael’s affairs. Michael thinks she is here to interview Eve. Astrid thinks she is her mother’s friend and is fascinated by her devil-may-care self-assurance and defiance of social convention. Magnus thinks she is an angel come to save him from suicide and deliver him into a new life of sexual bliss. Amber acts as a kind of emotional magnet, pulling each of the Smarts out of their comfort zones and into a dangerous territory where truth and fiction, denial and self-knowledge, habit and change are brought into high tension. I enjoyed this more than There but for the and Autumn; less than How to be both. I'm fond of Smith's writing, but I can't seem to fall in love with any of her books quite as I would like to.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. The novel has three parts: "The Beginning," "Middle" and "The End". Each part has a third party point of view of each character as well as short first party biographical and film-heavy sections by 'Alhambra' (who seems to be Amber). From the different adolescent Angsts to Eve's inability to write, Smith presents these convincingly and often beautifully -- though occasionally, too, the repetitive and very personal perspectives can be a bit much. Why has Ali Smith chosen The Accidental as her title? What accidents occur in the novel? Are these events really accidents? What are their consequences?

So is, soon enough, Magnus (helped by the fact that she's willing to sexually initiate him -- and then practise with him, over and over). Eva has achieved some success with a series of books called the Genuine Article Series -- "autobiotruefictinterviews", written in question-and-answer form. As mentioned, at the beginning, the idea is not particularly original but Smith carries it off very well, primarily because both Amber and her effect on the family are generally unpredictable. Once again, this is a book that confirms Ali Smith as a major writer. Publishing history Amber is written with a punchy if sometimes preachy directness. Each of the Smarts, on the other hand, engages in some particular variety of interminable introspection. (...) Like an elaborately faceted lens, Smith's writing aims to magnify her story and its characters. Instead, angled as it is, it distends its creator." - Richard Eder, The Los Angeles TimesAli 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.