The Accidental, Ali Smith
At the front of this book is a quotation from John Berger,
"Between the experience of living a normal life at this moment on the planet and the public narratives being offered to give a sense to that life, the empty space, the gap, is enormous."
That is what The Accidental does. Through the eyes of its four narrators it looks beneath that surface to look to see what is going on beneath.
The Smart family have gone away for the summer to a house in Norfolk. Each of them is hiding something, showing only their surface. Astrid, the 12 year old daughter, is obsessed with filming everything, living life at one remove through the lens. Magnus, the introspective son, worries that he has been instrumental in the suicide of a girl at his college. The father, a
Dr of English is secretly (or so he believes) seducing his students, Eve, the mother is working on her latest book but spends her days lying on the floor of the summer house in the garden.
Into this family comes Amber and one of the first things she does is grab Eve by the shoulders and give her a good shake. Each of the characters in turn is to be shaken by Amber, made to face up look at the world in a new light. What is it to be innocent? What is it to experience?
There is a great sense of place to this book. The takeaway scrawled with garfitti, dual carriageways, out of town shopping centres, all filmed on CCTV.
Each characters life is described in miniature yet this miniature says something larger about the world in which we live. I particular liked Smith's scathing views of mass culture, things we are supposed to like - Love Actually - like an extending advert for a building society, that teaches us if you are too fat you won't find love. The multicultural novel that nobody in the reading group could finish (I guess by Zadie Smith).
The writing is wonderful, poetic yet immediate. In fact, one whole section is written in different styles of poetry - after all it's narrator is a pretentious doctor of English and he believes finally he is in love, and poetry is the language of love.
This is what literature is for - to make us see life, to entertain.
I left this book deliriously happy. It is wonderful, flawless, perfect. I wanted to start it again as soon as I'd finished it.
The best thing ever. Quite possibly.
