The Accidental

The Accidental by Ali Smith Winner of the Whitbread Award
for best novel and a finalist for the Man Booker Prize The
Accidental is the virtuoso new novel by the singularly
gifted Ali Smith. Jonathan Safran Foer has called her
writing “thrilling.” Jeanette Winterson has praised her
for her “style ideas and punch.” Here in a novel at once
profound playful and exhilaratingly inventive she
transfixes us with a portrait of a family unraveled by a
mysterious visitor. Amber—thirtysomething and
barefoot—shows up at the door of the Norfolk cottage that
the Smarts are renting for the summer. She talks her way
in. She tells nothing but lies. She stays for dinner. Eve
Smart the author of a best-selling series of biographical
reconstructions thinks Amber is a student with whom her
husband Michael is sleeping. Michael an English professor
knows only that her car broke down. Daughter Astrid age
twelve thinks she’s her mother’s friend. Son Magnus age
seventeen thinks she’s an angel. As Amber insinuates
herself into the family the questions of who she is and
how she’s come to be there drop away. Instead dazzled by
her seeming exoticism the Smarts begin to examine the
accidents of their lives through the searing lens of
Amber’s perceptions. When Eve finally banishes her from
the cottage Amber disappears from their sight but not—they
discover when they return home to London—from their
profoundly altered lives. Fearlessly intelligent and
written with an irresistible blend of lyricism and whimsy
The Accidental is a tour de force of literary
improvisation that explores the nature of truth the role
of chance and the transformative power of storytelling.