The Accidental

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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 a b c "Ali Smith". Contemporary Writers.com. Archived from the original on 16 July 2009 . Retrieved 4 May 2008.

Turrentine, Jeff (26 February 2006). "When a Stranger Calls". The Washington Post . Retrieved 19 April 2008. The story is told in the third person but with the focus changing from character to character. All the four characters get their turn (or, rather, multiple turns) and all four have things to reveal and things to hide and all four change during the course of the book. July 2018 Bumping this rating up to four stars because I am still thinking about it a month later. Sometimes it’s best to sit on your feelings for a bit. * Her art is at its most powerful when she gets her wordplay to resonate, and send meaningful vibrations throughout the fiction. One of her best and most captivating novels is a contemporary retelling of Ovid’s gender-bending myth of Iphis, entitled “ Girl Meets Boy” (2007). Ovid’s tale is about a young girl who pretends to be a boy, and who is named Iphis, “a name both boys and girls could be called.” Iphis falls in love with Ianthe, a beautiful girl, and on the eve of her wedding is magically turned into a boy so that the marriage can be consummated. Smith’s version is set in modern Inverness, and concerns two sisters, Anthea and Imogen. Anthea falls in love with Robin Goodman, a woman who looks like a man. (“But he really looked like a girl. She was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen.”) Robin praises the classical writer for his fluidity: “He knows, more than most, that the imagination doesn’t have a gender.” Thus the novel, in ways both playful and deep, makes good on the cliché of its title: “girl meets boy” by meeting boy in the middle. The pun expands meaning and possibility.Remembering Bergman’s films, Eve asks: “Did dark times naturally result in dark art?” [p. 178]. Do they? Is The Accidental itself a dark novel about a dark time? If so, how so? She comes into the life of the Smart family one summer, and each part of the book is further divided into sections that focus on each of the four family-members: Eva and her second husband, Michael Smart, and her two children, Astrid and Magnus. Reese, Jennifer (6 January 2006). "The Accidental (2006)". Entertainment Weekly . Retrieved 19 April 2008. Each of these parts is preceded by a brief section from the accidental of the title, Alhambra/Amber. And what of that mysterious stranger? The enigmatic Amber arrives Chez Smart and moves in, yet no one in the family is quite up to admitting they have no idea who she is or how she found them. Her past feels irrelevant to the story, yet the stream-of-consciousness snippets indicate she was born in a movie theatre called Alhambra some three decades prior. She seems conjured out of legend, an imp, a sprite, beautiful and irreverent and frankly, rather mean-spirited and of questionable moral judgment. She drills under the skin of each family member, dragging them out of their emotional malaise and entrancing each before blowing the nuclear family to bits, figuratively speaking. Far be it from me, however, to give anything away.

Here it is, Ali Smith’s first full-length novel, and it is as good as anyone who has been watching the progress of this talented author could possibly have hoped. (...) Smith’s version of this archetypal fable is less mystical than Pasolini’s, but funnier. (...) Smith has written a proper novel with a beginning, a middle and an end, but turned it into an exuberantly inventive series of variations. At her beginning, each character is facing some kind of dead end. By the end, everything, including the story of the stranger on the doorstep, is ready to begin again. And in the middle is a fable as beautifully formed and as astringently intelligent as her barefoot delinquent angel." - Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Sunday Times The Accidental explores an interplay of fiction & reality— the Amber chapters/interstices are a clever play on the kind of Genuine series of books Eve Smart has built her reputation on: Shall I drop a hint? Think of Uncle Balt in The Tunnel. The entire Smart family & their experience is a fabrication of a character called Eve because the End gives a spin to everything that came before— Amber has morphed into Eve— a fictional character creating other fictional characters—talk about meta! The twist ending delivers a major po-mo punch. The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of Ali Smith’s extraordinary novel, The Accidental, winner of Britain’s prestigious Whitbread award. Introduction If there is a heroine, it is Astrid. She has a new video camera and gets up early every morning to film the dawn. She also films other things, such as the vandalised Indian restaurant and the cleaning lady. She has also been subjected to bullying at school and her mobile phone has been stolen by older girls. She dare not tell her parents, even though they are still paying for the contract. Murray, Noel (21 February 2006). "The Accidental". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on 16 May 2008 . Retrieved 19 April 2008.

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The other approach is to believe that it all actually happened, that despite melding truth & fiction for a living; Eve Smart couldn't see through the totally made up surface of Amber/Alhambra's persona & that in the end, Amber used another pseudonym, this time around, she called herself Eve & that the American family was in for a Smart-like misadventure— they were gonna lose all the doorknobs, carpets, & all their pretty horses too! Smith's presentation of this family-tale is remarkable: often compelling, occasionally frustrating.

Among much amusing word-play throughout the novel are the reactions to Amber's straight-faced truths, as when she leads Magnus down to dinner: "I found him in the bathroom trying to hang himself, she said. Everybody round the table laughed."). She literally chances into their lives, with everyone believing she is there for a different reason -- Michael thinks she's there to interview Eva; Eva thinks she's one of his student-lovers, etc. Ali Smith plays with form here, as one would expect, but I would hazard a guess that this is one of her more traditional narrative structures. Points of view shift here and there, with meltdown riffs that shake the reader up before moving her along.The only problem with the brilliance of Astrid as a fictional creation is that it rather makes you wish that the whole novel was hers. Which is not to say that the other characters are exactly bland, only that they don't radiate the same sense of discovery. (...) The Accidental has an infectious sense of fun and invention. The story goes through some surprising reversals and arrives at a satisfying conclusion, which is also a beginning. But afterwards, it's the child's voice you remember: it is Astrid's book." - Steven Poole, The Guardian The mysterious fifth character -- or fifth column -- is "Amber MacDonald" aka "Alhambra," (or, later, mysteriously, "Catherine Masson"). We meet her mainly through her increasingly outrageous, even criminal, encounters with each family member. The ironic tension becomes very uncomfortable, as it clear early on (but only to the reader) that she's a highly skilled con artist who regards Eve and Michael as disgustingly easy marks. She even claims to be descended directly from the MacDonalds of Glencoe** and quotes in Gaelic, then translates, a saying: "Be sure you know who you are letting into your home before you let them in" -- a warning the Smarts ignore. Even her names -- Amber (Yellow) and her birth name, Alhambra (Red), after an old local theatre where she was supposedly conceived, are warning lights. But all the hints Amber throws out go right over the self-absorbed parents' heads.

My favorite character is of course Astrid. She is now one of the fictional characters that I will remember for a long time or maybe remember forever. Smith was able to beautifully capture the eccentricities and intensity of a 12-y/o lost character. 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 Spectacular . . . Allusive, ambitious and formally acrobatic . . . Original, restless, formally and morally challenging, [Ali Smith] remains a writer who resists definition." - The Times Literary Supplement.Slowly Amber changes each family member in a positive way but this is no cliched Benny and Joon story. Amber usually changes people by antagonising them (except for Magnus) and exposing their true selves. Towards the end Astrid is more aware of life, Magnus is filled with hope, Michael sees the emptiness of his life and Eve begins to be more genuine. There’s also the subplot about the history of cinema, this is presumably Amber’s personal story. 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?