The Accidental

The Accidental

by Ali Smith (Author)

Synopsis

The Accidental is Ali Smith's dazzling novel about a family holiday and a stranger who upends it. Arresting and wonderful, The Accidental pans in on the Norfolk holiday home of the Smart family one hot summer. There a beguiling stranger called Amber appears at the door bearing all sorts of unexpected gifts, trampling over family boundaries and sending each of the Smarts scurrying from the dark into the light. A novel about the ways that seemingly chance encounters irrevocably transform our understanding of ourselves, The Accidental explores the nature of truth, the role of fate and the power of storytelling. "A beguiling page-turner ...a brilliant creation. To read The Accidental is to be excited from first to last". (Independent). "Joyous, a shot across the bows...writing as rapture, as giddy delight". (The Times). "Brilliant and engaging, frequently hilarious...Smith makes one look at the world afresh". (Sunday Telegraph).

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 305
Edition: First printing of this edition
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 06 Apr 2006

ISBN 10: 0141010398
ISBN 13: 9780141010397
Prizes: Winner of Whitbread Book Awards: Novel Category 2005. Shortlisted for Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award 2006 and Orange Prize 2006 and Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2005.

Media Reviews
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.


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
Author Bio
Ali Smith 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, Public library and other stories and Autumn. 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 Women's Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Folio Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.