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 enlarge | Author: Ali Smith
Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $34.95
Buy New: $2.76
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New (26) from $2.76
Avg. Customer Rating:  59 reviews
Sales Rank: 907557
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 540
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 5.8 x 5.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 1598870130
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781598870138
ASIN: 1598870130
Publication Date: February 2, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: **NEW AUDIO ** 8 CDs, approx 9 hours, unabridged. Still factory sealed. Excellent condition. Shipped with delivery confirmation inside US. Selling since 1979*d
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| Customer Reviews:
 Whoops-a-Daisy October 25, 2007
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
It's no secret that writers, especially the literary kind, are known for wearing their works like masks, slipping their hands puppet-like into characters and mugging for their audience: they may not be as smart, attractive, or popular as their characters, but the authors certainly share the same opinions.
In "The Accidental," it's not hard to figure out who author Ali Smith wants to be (or is). She's Amber, a sort of stochastic herbal essence, an earth-flavored, barefoot, dandelion wine of a woman who flounces in a figurative free-fall into the core of the book, twirls about with mad abandon and reckless sexiness, and disappears with just as much speed and consequence. She puts dirty thighs on Heisneberg's uncertainty principle and drops the drawers of chaos theory, manhandling the nuts and bolts inside.
Okay, I'm sorry, I'll be less poetic, even I think Smith herself would appreciate such an out-of-the-lines description. Smith's writing is equally unfettered, and for people who like the idea of meandering through prose the way you might meander through a lovely (and creepy) forest, "The Accidental" is something to cuddle up to. The whole novel reads like one long word game, and even if that means the seriousness of its import is sometimes smeared aside, it also means that for people who love the English language, well, there's plenty here to enjoy.
But that import. Let me not forget the import.
The story is about the family Smarts. Eve is a struggling writer, Michael is an oversexed professor, Magnus is a tortured teen with a secret, and Astrid is a identity-challenged female (one of those thirteen-year-old daughters that cannot accurately be called either girl, woman, or even young lady). Their problems aren't particularly astounding or new, and in many cases, it's hard to sympathize with them, since their troubles are self-brewed and administered (or, in the case of Astrid, normal enough to be boring).
Amber doesn't sympathize with them either. She appears one day at their summer cottage and their lives begin to change. She manipulates and motivates them in the same way any good author drives and directs her characters. The only difference here is that the characters are aware of the manipulation. Step aside, Priandello. Smith's gonna show you a thing or two.
It works in fits and starts (much in the same way that the metaphorical character names are simultaneously profound and heavy-handed), depending on who you sympathize with. I found myself most closely drawn to the adolescent Astrid, but only because her pre-teen angsts were so accurately set up and then so cleanly knocked down. Magnus's shackles of misery and his subsequent liberation I found clever but overdrawn. Eve's self-doubts and dramatics were powerfully done, but ultimately watered down. And Michael, well, the man may well have not existed in the book. As an English professor, some of his sections manage to have the most interesting writing and yet still say the least out of anyone's. Perhaps that's the point.
The book shows us the same things in four different ways, and it's entertaining in the way of jugglers and Rubik's Cubes. It's ultimately the point of the novel that gets in the way, its drive to be something serious. Eve's section ends with a sort-of back-loop to what started the novel, and it's far too cute for the book's own good. She tries to learn and emulate Amber, the novel's catalyst, and although Smith suggests it leads to redemption, I have my doubts.
Because, although Amber is certainly an intriguing character, she is ultimately a marionette with about four strings too many. The book is occasionally punctuated with brief Amber vignettes; related primarily to movies, they are supposed to give us a glimpse into Amber's genesis and upbringing in a world of celluloid and Act 3 miracles, to show us where her free-spirited anarchy found its first birth, and to explain -- in some small measure -- why (or how) this strange woman alters the lives along her seemingly uncharted path. It's Smith's way of bear-hugging the character, of petting her fondly by the fire of her soul.
It's a little patronizing, but it's also understandable. Amber is any author's dream -- something mysterious and sexy, a controlled explosion. Smith wants to use her to teach us something, and even if I didn't feel particularly educated after her exposure (can you guess if the Smarts get smarter?), I did enjoy myself. That part probably wasn't an accident.
 Palaver August 10, 2007
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
In one of the few impressive passages of Ali Smith's novel "The Accidental," a 17 year old boy named Magnus, the son of Eve Smart and stepson of her husband Michael Smart, reflects upon Plato's allegory of the cave:
"A group of men were chained inside a cave, and all they saw, all they could see and all they'd ever seen of the world was the shadows their own fire made on the walls. They watched the shadows all the time. They spent their days watching them. They believed that's what life was. But then one of them was forced out of the cave and into the real world. When he came back into the cave and told the others about sunlight, they didn't believe him." (p. 249)
Plato' allegory has a timeless quality that captures, in its provocative way, something essential about the human condition. People tend to flounder in their lives, to be unsure of what they want, and to pursue things that will not bring them happiness. It is the part of wisdom to leave the cave and see reality clearly. For those who take Plato's allegory seriously, philosophy and spirituality (religion) tend to be the paths that can lead out of the cave.
Smith's book seems to be a meditiation on how people continue to be caught in Plato's cave and in its world of illusions. The chief characters in the book are the members of a disfunctional family, the Smarts. Michael Smart, 42, is a womanizing professor of English and a poet. His wife Eve, 42, is a writer of historical fiction. Magnus, Eve's son, has adolescent sexuality and a dark secret on his mind. Astrid, 12, a budding adolescent, spends a great deal of time with photography and with an expensive camera her parents have given her.
On a summer holiday in Norfolk, the Smart's meet -- or do they -- a 30ish woman named Amber who changes their lives. She throws away Astrid's camera, has sex with Magnus, insults Eve, and doesn't sleep with Michael. Amber, or the idea of Amber, changes the life of the family and each of its four members, irrevocably when they return from their holiday.
Smith's writing style is a major problem with this book. While she does try to develop her characters, the writing is choppy and mannered. The writing calls attention to itself, shows no real inner feeling, and is, in general, unsuited to a serious theme. It failed to hold my interest after only a few pages.
I didn't find the book took Plato or his cave seriously. The book has an aura of importance to it which is belied by its mannerism and its triviality. Smith and her character Amber may want to call the reader's attention to how the Smarts, and most people remain imprisoned in Plato's cave. But the writing itself, and Amber's antics, did not inspire confidence in me. The story of the book and the characters did not persuade me that anyone was understanding or escaping from a cave. Rather, the characters, the author, and the story itself, seem caught in their cave. The characters and their problems seemed stereotyped and predictable, and the manner of the telling was irritating. There was little insightful in the problems of the characters, in Amber's impact upon them, or in the resolution.
The theme of a mysterious stranger, generally a woman, who descends upon a family and brings the voice of imagination or hope into their lives is not unusual in fiction. A much better, though less heralded novel in which the theme is well explored is "The Illuminated Soul" by Aryeh Stollman. That book explains the effect of a woman visitor of uncertain origins on the imagination and life of a brooding, highly intelligent adolescent boy who has lost his father and on his family. The story is told much more seriously and reflectively than is the case in this novel.
Readers who are interested in Smith's theme will find it much better realized in Stollman's fine book.
Plato's allegory of the cave remains an archetype of human experience, the stuff of which novels are made. But I am afraid "The Accidental" is flip, stilted, and pretentious. It remains caught in its own morass.
Robin Friedman
An angel passing through June 19, 2007
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
One might almost call this "Touched by an Angel." An enigmatic young woman, Amber -- free-sprited, unpredictable -- attaches herself to a dysfunctional English family on holiday in Norfolk, and quickly forms a special relationship with each member of it, seeing into and eventually unknotting their various obsessions. The twelve-year-old daughter is obsessed with her video camera, the teenage son with his guilt in the suicide of a schoolmate, the English professor stepfather with his beddable students, and the driven mother with her career as a writer of creative non-fiction. Although the things that Amber does are far from angelic, ranging from larceny to assault, her presence catalyzes a change for the better in each of the characters, that continues to develop even after she has moved on.
Smith's writing is lively and audacious, but its apparent informality conceals a careful texture of references and reminiscences. She is excellent at capturing the voices of each of the four family members, even writing a section for the father as a tour-de-force sonnet sequence. At times the pattern seems a little too predictable, but Smith keeps some surprises up her sleeve --- none less than the surprising ending which wraps the book up neatly in narrative terms, if not quite so pleasingly in human ones.
I seem to have read a lot of books lately based on what one might charitably call non-nuclear families, and narrated at least partly in the voice of one of the children. THE ACCIDENTAL is a fine example of the genre, but not the best of them; I would award that title to Myla Goldberg's superb BEE SEASON. Other books of this kind that might appeal to readers of THE ACCIDENTAL are, in an English or Irish context: MJ Hyland's CARRY ME DOWN, David Mitchell's BLACK SWAN GREEN, Kate Atkinson's family saga BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE MUSEUM, and Mark Haddon's very special special case: THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. Zadie Smith transports the genre to American shores in ON BEAUTY, where Jonathan Safran Foer uses the quirkier elements of it in EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE, and Nicole Krauss develops the lyrical side in THE HISTORY OF LOVE. Finally Marisha Pessl's SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS, though written through the eyes of a more mature character, also explores the power of a mysterious and charismatic outsider to affect (not necessarily for the best) the life of a growing child. Few of these books are perfect, and THE ACCIDENTAL isn't either, but any reader who enjoyed one of them would probably find much to admire in the others.
 I should've kept my receipt.... June 12, 2007
3 out of 7 found this review helpful
This was one of the worst books I've ever read. If I hadn't bought the book I would've quit about 20 pages in and returned it. The author rambled on and on many times about unimportant things. I felt as though the storyline lost itself repeatedly and I was left asking questions throughout the story and even at the end. This Amber person might've "helped" (if you can call it help), the family but it's hard to understand why anyone would let a total stranger stay with them for such a long period of time. Anyways. I would not recommend this book to anyone unless you want to be frustrated and annoyed.
 Accidentally astonishing. April 16, 2007
14 out of 18 found this review helpful
Ali Smith's writing is astonishing. She has a knack for quirky humor and engrossing wordplay. In her novel THE ACCIDENTAL, for instance, one of Smith's characters (Amber) describes her childhood: "But my father was Alfie, my mother was Isadora. I was unnaturally psychic in my teens, I made a boy fall off his bike and I burned down a whole school. My mother was crazy, she was in love with God. There I was at the altar about to marry someone else when my boyfriend hammered on the church glass at the back and we eloped together on a bus. My mother was furious. She'd slept with him too. The devil got me pregnant and a satanic sect made me go through with it. Then I fell in with a couple of outlaws and did me some talking to the sun. I said I didn't like the way he got things done. I had sex in the back of the old closing cinema. I used butter in Paris. I had a farm in Africa. I took off my clothes in the window of an apartment building and distracted the two police inspectors from watching for the madman on the roof who was trying to shoot the priest. I fell for an Italian. It was his moves on the dancefloor that did it. I knew what love meant. It meant never having to say you're sorry. It meant the man who drove the taxi would kill the presidential candidate, or the pimp. It was soft as an easy chair" (pp. 104-105). When it was published in 2004, not surprisingly, THE ACCIDENTAL was shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize and won the 2005 Whitbread Novel of the Year award.
The novel tells the non-linear story (told through the shifting mental perspectives of each character) of a blonde, free-spirited, thirtysomething woman (Amber), who unexpectedly disrupts the Smart family vacation in Norfolk, England by seducing each family member with her psychological manipulations. If you believe the Smarts, Amber is "a charlatan and a trickster and a liar" (p. 230). Astrid Smart is a 12-year-old who sees the world through the lens of her video camera. To her, Amber is a hero who throws her camera from a highway overpass. Magnus Smart is Astrid's guilt-racked 17-year-old brother, who believes he killed a classmate with a humiliating e-mail. To him, Amber is an angel who not only saves him from his despair, but who also awakens his sexuality. Their mother, Eve Smart, is a writer suffering from writer's block, who believes Amber is her womanizing husband's latest conquest. Michael Smart is a University professor, who assumes Amber is his wife's friend. When Amber just as abruptly disappears from their lives (as the US war in Iraq is escalating), the Smarts have discovered that, while they can take a vacation from the shadows of the world they have been calling life, it takes an "accidental" encounter with Amber to jolt them from that life. Smith suggests the Smarts are like the "group of men" in Plato's cave, who mistake the shadows of the cave for the world, and Amber is like the one who wandered outside the cave to discover the sunlight of the real world (p. 249). Highly recommended.
G. Merritt
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