The Accidental

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How to describe the Smart family -- especially the parents, Eve, a successful writer of popular fiction, and second-husband-Michael, an English professor, on holiday in a dreary, dusty summer cottage in an unfashionable resort town?

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. Why does Smith choose to end the novel with Eve’s journey to America? What is likely to happen in the future to the Smart family? About this Author Brilliant and engaging, frequently hilarious, exhilaratingly sharp-eyed . . . Smith makes one look at the world afresh Sunday Telegraph Why has Smith chosen Smart as the name of the family in the novel? In what ways are they smart and not so smart?The story is of a dysfunctional London family in summer residence in a rural town in Norfolk, with sections alternately told from the minds of an adult couple, Michael and Eve, and their kids, twelve-year old Astrid and seventeen-year old Magnus. Astrid is largely ignored by her parents and lives in a vibrant fantasy life and projects involving documenting the world with her videocam. Magnus is in a horrible limbo of probation pending investigation of his role in internet bullying of a girl that led to her suicide. Eve is enjoying success as a writer of a series based on ordinary real people who died in World War 2, whom she renders in a fictional rewrite of the life they might had lived. Michael is a professor of Victorian literature, failed poet, and perpetual philanderer targeting his students.

Without easy resolutions -- and with some odd choices (the way Eve abandons her children, in particular, is a bit hard to swallow) -- it's an often fascinating, occasionally confounding read.Even better is the way that Astrid changes. Many child narrators are artificially fixed in an idealistic moment to teach us something about youth and innocence. Though the action of The Accidental spans only a few months, Smith manages to render a sense of learning and linguistic faddishness in the girl. When the novel begins, Astrid's favourite word is "substandard", but by the end it is in the process of being replaced by "preternaturally". She uses "ie" a lot at first, and then switches to "id est" once someone tells her that it comes from Latin. Smith was an English lecturer at Strathclyde University before falling ill with chronic fatigue syndrome for a year. She then became a full-time writer. Did you know? The stranger who arrives in mysterious circumstances and turns a household on its ear may be familiar literary trope, but Ali Smith does it with such panache and vivacity, the familiar becomes fresh and revelatory. Eva has achieved some success with a series of books called the Genuine Article Series -- "autobiotruefictinterviews", written in question-and-answer form.

Interesting too is the arrangement, the five points of view each of the beginning, middle, and end have some overlap -- and some gaps. Amber, straightforward and forthright, if not always usefully responsive, is accepted and welcomed on her own terms. 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).

British novelist and Booker Prize nominee Smith (Hotel World, 2001) renders acrobatic prose that seems in a perpetual state of acceleration .... mesmerizing." - Booklist. What does The Accidental say about family life? In what ways are the Smarts both a typical and an atypical family? 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.

Each has different preoccupations -- and often is hiding something from the others (though Amber causes much of that to spill out, one way or another).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 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. The Smart family, composed of Michael, the father, Eve the mother, Magnus, the son and the daughter Astrid, is a typical Western dysfuntional family. In the beginning of the book, the young girl Astrid brings with her, anywhere she goes, a camera and she has this habit of capturing sunrises and sundowns. My take on this is that Astrid tries to filter what she sees through her camera because it is through the lens where she can figure out things better. It's kind of metaphor and I loved it.