Like the musical notation with which the novel shares a name, the Buñuelian absurdity at the heart of The Accidental lifts the tale a step sharp from domestic realism (the discretions of the bourgeoisie indeed !). What's more, it demands that the reader make decisions." - Jessica Winter, The Village Voice

Eve: deliberately blind-deaf-and-dumb? She is oblivious to her children's distress and ignores her husband's unfaithfulness. 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. Ali Smith is the author of six works of fiction, including the novel Hotel World, which was short-listed for both the Orange and the Booker prizes in 2001 and won the Encore Award and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award in 2002. Her story collections include Free Love, which won the Saltire Society Scottish First Award, a Scottish First Book Award, and a Scottish Arts Council Award, and The Whole Story and Other Stories. Born in Inverness, Scotland, in 1962, Smith now lives in Cambridge, England. Suggested Reading Amber often tells the truth so directly that she is thought to be joking, as when she comes down to dinner with Magnus announcing that she found him in the bathroom trying to hang himself. Everyone laughs but in fact she is telling exactly what happened. What is the significance of this irony—that the truth, plainly stated, is impossible for the Smarts to believe?Reading Paulette Jiles' revenge western Chenneville, it's easy to remember she's a poet. She plays ... Michael is a professor of English, but his main pursuit appears to be that of his young female students. Interspersed with the episodes on the family are segments told by someone who calls herself Alhambra, named after the movie theater where she was conceived. Her riffs on cinema history and the impact on our culture are marvelous. It seems likely this is Amber, based on what she says she gained from her parents: “ From my mother: grace under pressure; the uses of mystery; how to get what I want. From my father: how to disappear, how not to exist.” It's difficult for any writer to pull off rotating viewpoints, but Smith does it perfectly, without a hint of clumsiness or tentativeness. (...) It's especially hard considering how disparate the characters are. (...) It pays to be suspicious of writers who tie things up too neatly, who end novels a little too perfectly. But Smith doesn't have this problem -- the last sentence of the book manages to be enlightening, confusing and almost destructive in its simple power. It doesn't tie things up; it almost unravels whatever ties the reader has invented while reading the book." - Michael Schaub, San Francisco Chronicle

If Amber's sudden entry & stay with the Smarts requires willing suspension of disbelief, it is because it's indeed a fabrication! If the Smarts are like a bunch of cliches: a randy academic undergoing a mid-life crisis, a self-absorbed, negligent writer-mother-wife, an angsty teen, a surly & confused adolescent; they are.

Retailers:

The Accidental takes a well-worn premise – in which the appearance of an enigmatic newcomer upsets the balance of a largely dissatisfied upper-middle-class family – and filters it through that inimitable freeform Ali Smith style. Eva has achieved some success with a series of books called the Genuine Article Series -- "autobiotruefictinterviews", written in question-and-answer form. Thing is, I got most of her books & would like to completionize them but I don't want more of the same. Ali Smith is a gay writer & no problem with that but it gets on my nerves the way her straight female characters respond to overtures from another female— as if a world of (better) unexplored possibilities opens up before them! As if being gay was a lifestyle choice & not an embedded fact of one's biological makeup.

Amber appears to bring catastrophe to the Smart family. In what ways could it be argued that she has been good for them? What do they discover about themselves because of her? Have the Smarts unconsciously drawn Amber to them? 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?

This is a book for folks who have an appetite for literary experimentation. If you liked Ulysses, you will like this. If you like guessing where dialogue begins and thought ends, you will love this. As for me, I think that punctuation was invented for a reason. Call me pedestrian. I also like some literary experimentation, for example I loved Shadow Tag by Louise Erdich. But Erdich’s book drew me in inexorably and I watched in horror as a relationship imploded. It was a compelling and satisfying work and well worth putting the time into. This one was simply boring and annoying and it alienated me. After Amber's bold performance, the conciliatory conclusion (...) disappoints. Yet Ms. Smith's formal achievements make her required reading for serious student's of last year's fiction. (...) Her stream of consciousness is narrow, but it is swift and deep." - Benjamin Lytal, The New York Sun