The Accidental
Encyclopedia
The Accidental is a 2005 novel by Scottish
author Ali Smith
. It follows a middle-class English family who are visited by an uninvited guest, Amber, while they are on holiday in a small village in Norfolk
. Amber's arrival has a profound impact on all the family members. Eventually she is cast out the house by the mother, Eve. But the consequences of her appearance continue even after the family has returned home to London.
The novel was received positively by critics. Jennifer Reese of American
magazine Entertainment Weekly
praised the book, writing that "while The Accidental does not add up to much more than a clever stunt, Smith pulls it off with terrific pizzazz." The novel was shortlisted for The Orange Prize, The Man Booker Prize and James Tait Black Memorial Prize and won the Whitbread Award
.
is a Scottish
author, born in Inverness
in 1962. She was a lecturer at the University of Strathclyde
in Glasgow
until she retired after contracting chronic fatigue syndrome, to focus more on authoring books. Smith's first book, Free Love and Other Stories
, was published in 1995 and praised by critics, and was awarded the Saltire First Book of the Year award.
The novel opens with Alhambra telling us of her conception in ‘the town’s only cinema’. We then come to “The Beginning”, which consists of a third-person narration focused first on Astrid, then Magnus, then Michael, then finally Eve. Through each character we obtain a different view of how Amber came into their lives, and who they believed her to be, when she arrived unannounced and uninvited at their Norfolk
holiday home, claiming her car had broken down. Through “The Beginning”, we learn of Astrid’s obsession with video-taping her life, seemingly as proof it existed; of Magnus’ involvement in a school prank which resulted in the suicide of one of his classmates; of Michael’s affairs with his students (he is a university lecturer); and of Eve’s writer’s block.
The second first-person narration we have from Alhambra is altogether different to the first – here we are not offered her history, but rather a history of 20th century cinema – a past which she seems to adopt as her own, as if she were each of the characters in those films. “The Middle” deals, again, with each of the family members’ experiences of Amber: she throws Astrid’s camera off a bridge into the road, she seduces Magnus, and reveals flaws in Eve and Michael’s relationship. “The Middle” ends with Eve throwing Amber out of their holiday home.
The third first-person narration from Alhambra follows, which is much the same as the second. We then have “The End”, which takes us to the Smart home once they return from holiday. The house has been emptied of all possessions – we must assume, as the family do, by Amber – leaving nothing but the answering machine, which contains messages forcing Magnus, Michael and Eve to face up to their past. Magnus and Astrid seem freed and excited by the experience of losing their possessions, their past – Michael also seems to find some redemption. Eve, however, runs away from the family, embarking on a round-the-world tour – eventually ending up in America, where she goes in search of her old family home. “The End” ends, ominously, with Eve seeming to take up Amber’s mantle, arriving at someone’s house as an uninvited guest. The book then finishes with a short section from Alhambra, reinforcing her connection to the cinema.
Critic John Sutherland also comments on the novel's "remarkable narrative obliquity" He focuses also on the intertextual and even "intergeneric" nature of the book, the way in which it references the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1968 film Teorema in which, likewise, "a mysterious, beautiful stranger [. . .] arrives from nowhere into a family and, simply by virtue of what he is, destroys their merely 'theoretic' coherence". Hence Sutherland also stresses the ways in which Amber is "the offspring of cinema".
called it a "thoroughly charming and melodic novel," adding that it was "small and glistening, one confident little shooting star instead of a cumbersome light show." American magazine The Atlantic Monthly
praised the book, writing that "[the book] is an enormous technical accomplishment that reminds us of the difference between linguistic hocus-pocus and real writing; more important, it casts a spell." Adam Begley of The New York Observer called it "A delightful book," adding that it is "a satire that's playful but not cuddly, tart but not bitter, thoughtful but not heavy." Publishers Weekly
commented "so sure-handed are Smith's overlapping descriptions of the same events from different viewpoints that her simple, disquieting story lifts into brilliance." Michael Schaub of San Francisco Chronicle
wrote "as dark as the novel can be, there are genuinely funny moments as well," adding that "the last sentence of the book manages to be enlightening, confusing and almost destructive in its simple power." The Times Literary Supplement
wrote that the book is "original, restless, formally and morally challenging."
Jeff Turrentine of The Washington Post
praised the book, writing "though The Accidental is not a conventionally funny novel, readers may find themselves laughing – in surprise and delight – at the way Smith takes a literary trope and riffs on it until she's turned it inside out, the way a great jazz musician might." Noel Murray of The A.V. Club
praised the book, commenting that "though The Accidental is more spectacularly messy than brilliant, it has a strong perspective on what it means to be alive in the early '00s, and constantly tugged at by the disturbingly similar feelings of guilt and self-righteousness." In a positive review by The Guardian
, Steven Poole notes that "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." Kirkus Reviews
called the book "Dazzling wordplay and abundant imagination invigorate a tale of lives interrupted." The Christian Science Monitor
wrote "the writing brims with wit, humor, and energy." In a mixed review by 'Bookslut,' Eoin Cunningham wrote "The Accidental ends up more an exercise in cleverness than a story. Equally, the reader’s enjoyment of The Accidental will be inextricably linked to their appetite for such an exercise. If you aren’t swept away by Smith’s undoubted way with words, and you rely on the bones of the story itself, you will be disappointed."
The novel was chosen as the winner of the Second Annual Tournament of Books, presented by The Morning News
in 2006.
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
author Ali Smith
Ali Smith
Ali Smith is a British writer.She was born to working-class parents, raised in a council house in Inverness and now lives in Cambridge. She studied at the University of Aberdeen and then at Newnham College, Cambridge, for a PhD that was never finished. She worked as a lecturer at University of...
. It follows a middle-class English family who are visited by an uninvited guest, Amber, while they are on holiday in a small village in Norfolk
Norfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...
. Amber's arrival has a profound impact on all the family members. Eventually she is cast out the house by the mother, Eve. But the consequences of her appearance continue even after the family has returned home to London.
The novel was received positively by critics. Jennifer Reese of American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
magazine Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
praised the book, writing that "while The Accidental does not add up to much more than a clever stunt, Smith pulls it off with terrific pizzazz." The novel was shortlisted for The Orange Prize, The Man Booker Prize and James Tait Black Memorial Prize and won the Whitbread Award
Costa Book Awards
The Costa Book Awards are a series of literary awards given to books by authors based in Great Britain and Ireland. They were known as the Whitbread Book Awards until 2005, after which Costa Coffee, a subsidiary of Whitbread, took over sponsorship....
.
Author
Ali SmithAli Smith
Ali Smith is a British writer.She was born to working-class parents, raised in a council house in Inverness and now lives in Cambridge. She studied at the University of Aberdeen and then at Newnham College, Cambridge, for a PhD that was never finished. She worked as a lecturer at University of...
is a Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
author, born in Inverness
Inverness
Inverness is a city in the Scottish Highlands. It is the administrative centre for the Highland council area, and is regarded as the capital of the Highlands of Scotland...
in 1962. She was a lecturer at the University of Strathclyde
University of Strathclyde
The University of Strathclyde , Glasgow, Scotland, is Glasgow's second university by age, founded in 1796, and receiving its Royal Charter in 1964 as the UK's first technological university...
in Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
until she retired after contracting chronic fatigue syndrome, to focus more on authoring books. Smith's first book, Free Love and Other Stories
Free Love and Other Stories
Free Love and Other Stories is a short story collection by Scottish Booker-shortlisted author Ali Smith, first published in 1995 by Virago Press. It was her first published book and won the Saltire First Book of the Year award...
, was published in 1995 and praised by critics, and was awarded the Saltire First Book of the Year award.
Plot
The novel consists of three parts: "The Beginning," "Middle" and "The End." Each part contains four separate narrations, one focusing on each member of the Smart family: Eve, the mother, Michael, her husband, Astrid (12) and Magnus (17), two children of Eve’s from a previous marriage (to Adam Berenski). Opening and closing the novel, and between each part, we have four sections of first-person narration from ‘Alhambra’ – who we can assume is Amber, the Smarts' uninvited house-guest.The novel opens with Alhambra telling us of her conception in ‘the town’s only cinema’. We then come to “The Beginning”, which consists of a third-person narration focused first on Astrid, then Magnus, then Michael, then finally Eve. Through each character we obtain a different view of how Amber came into their lives, and who they believed her to be, when she arrived unannounced and uninvited at their Norfolk
Norfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...
holiday home, claiming her car had broken down. Through “The Beginning”, we learn of Astrid’s obsession with video-taping her life, seemingly as proof it existed; of Magnus’ involvement in a school prank which resulted in the suicide of one of his classmates; of Michael’s affairs with his students (he is a university lecturer); and of Eve’s writer’s block.
The second first-person narration we have from Alhambra is altogether different to the first – here we are not offered her history, but rather a history of 20th century cinema – a past which she seems to adopt as her own, as if she were each of the characters in those films. “The Middle” deals, again, with each of the family members’ experiences of Amber: she throws Astrid’s camera off a bridge into the road, she seduces Magnus, and reveals flaws in Eve and Michael’s relationship. “The Middle” ends with Eve throwing Amber out of their holiday home.
The third first-person narration from Alhambra follows, which is much the same as the second. We then have “The End”, which takes us to the Smart home once they return from holiday. The house has been emptied of all possessions – we must assume, as the family do, by Amber – leaving nothing but the answering machine, which contains messages forcing Magnus, Michael and Eve to face up to their past. Magnus and Astrid seem freed and excited by the experience of losing their possessions, their past – Michael also seems to find some redemption. Eve, however, runs away from the family, embarking on a round-the-world tour – eventually ending up in America, where she goes in search of her old family home. “The End” ends, ominously, with Eve seeming to take up Amber’s mantle, arriving at someone’s house as an uninvited guest. The book then finishes with a short section from Alhambra, reinforcing her connection to the cinema.
Style
Critics have noted the ways in which this is a postmodern novel that "raises questions about the nature of representation". Richard Bradford, for instance, plays particular attention to Smith's use of language and the disparate discourses voiced by distinct characters. Eventually, as he points out, "the relatively secure borders between each character's third-person space begin to break down with voices echoing in and out of each other". And as a challenge to the realism of traditional Scottish fiction, "at one point the book itself appears in danger of fragmenting, as words and letters collapse out of regular typeface and collapse across the page".Critic John Sutherland also comments on the novel's "remarkable narrative obliquity" He focuses also on the intertextual and even "intergeneric" nature of the book, the way in which it references the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1968 film Teorema in which, likewise, "a mysterious, beautiful stranger [. . .] arrives from nowhere into a family and, simply by virtue of what he is, destroys their merely 'theoretic' coherence". Hence Sutherland also stresses the ways in which Amber is "the offspring of cinema".
Reception
The book received positive reviews from critics. Gail Caldwell of The Boston GlobeThe Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
called it a "thoroughly charming and melodic novel," adding that it was "small and glistening, one confident little shooting star instead of a cumbersome light show." American magazine The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...
praised the book, writing that "[the book] is an enormous technical accomplishment that reminds us of the difference between linguistic hocus-pocus and real writing; more important, it casts a spell." Adam Begley of The New York Observer called it "A delightful book," adding that it is "a satire that's playful but not cuddly, tart but not bitter, thoughtful but not heavy." Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
commented "so sure-handed are Smith's overlapping descriptions of the same events from different viewpoints that her simple, disquieting story lifts into brilliance." Michael Schaub of San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
wrote "as dark as the novel can be, there are genuinely funny moments as well," adding that "the last sentence of the book manages to be enlightening, confusing and almost destructive in its simple power." The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
wrote that the book is "original, restless, formally and morally challenging."
Jeff Turrentine of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
praised the book, writing "though The Accidental is not a conventionally funny novel, readers may find themselves laughing – in surprise and delight – at the way Smith takes a literary trope and riffs on it until she's turned it inside out, the way a great jazz musician might." Noel Murray of The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club
The A.V. Club is an entertainment newspaper and website published by The Onion. Its features include reviews of new films, music, television, books, games and DVDs, as well as interviews and other regular offerings examining both new and classic media and other elements of pop culture. Unlike its...
praised the book, commenting that "though The Accidental is more spectacularly messy than brilliant, it has a strong perspective on what it means to be alive in the early '00s, and constantly tugged at by the disturbingly similar feelings of guilt and self-righteousness." In a positive review by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, Steven Poole notes that "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." Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus . Kirkus serves the book and literary trade sector, including libraries, publishers, literary and film agents, film and TV producers and booksellers. Kirkus Reviews is published on the first and 15th of each month...
called the book "Dazzling wordplay and abundant imagination invigorate a tale of lives interrupted." The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor
The Christian Science Monitor is an international newspaper published daily online, Monday to Friday, and weekly in print. It was started in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. As of 2009, the print circulation was 67,703.The CSM is a newspaper that covers...
wrote "the writing brims with wit, humor, and energy." In a mixed review by 'Bookslut,' Eoin Cunningham wrote "The Accidental ends up more an exercise in cleverness than a story. Equally, the reader’s enjoyment of The Accidental will be inextricably linked to their appetite for such an exercise. If you aren’t swept away by Smith’s undoubted way with words, and you rely on the bones of the story itself, you will be disappointed."
The novel was chosen as the winner of the Second Annual Tournament of Books, presented by The Morning News
The Morning News
The Morning News may refer to:* ITV Morning News, in the United Kingdom* Morning News , in Canada* The Morning News * The Morning News * The Morning News...
in 2006.