Synopses & Reviews
From the critically acclaimed author of
Hotel World comes a collection of uniquely inventive stories that thread the labyrinth of coincidence, chance, and connections missed and made.
What happens when you run into Death in a busy train station? (You know hes Death because when he smiles, your cell phone goes dead.) What if your lover falls in love with a tree? Should you be jealous? From the woman pursued by a band of bagpipers in full regalia to the artist whos built a seven-foot boat out of secondhand copies of The Great Gatsby, Smiths characters are offbeat, charming, sexy, and as wonderfully complex as life itself.
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"One of Britain's major talents....Startlingly accomplished." The Atlantic Monthly
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"Smith is a gifted and meticulous architect of character and voice." The Washington Post
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"Smith proves herself an experimental writer even your mother could love." Elle
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"'The Heat of the Story,' the volume's finest, is a droll and touching tale....It achieves grandeur with measured effects, astutely figurative language...and a refreshing lack of cataclysm or melodrama." Mark Kamine, The New York Times Book Review
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"A joy to read." Sunday Times (London)
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"Smith is a gifted and meticulous architect of character and voice." The Washington Post
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"She's street-savvy and poignant at once....There's a kind of stainless steel clarity at the center of her fiction." The Boston Globe
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"Smith proves herself an experimental writer even your mother could love." Elle
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"What whole story? The point of Ali Smith's new collection would seem to be that there is no such thing. Experience is infinitely divisible; perspectives shimmer and refract....Smith's vision, like her prose, is startlingly fresh; her stories are short and suggestive. No longer a young Turk (she is now over forty), Smith has moved smoothly into place as one of Britain's most important and established writers." Brooke Allen, The Atlantic Monthly (read the entire Atlantic Monthly review)
About the Author
Ali Smith is the author of Hotel World, which was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize in 2001 and won the Encore Award and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award in 2002. Her first collection of stories, Free Love, won the Saltire First Book Award and a Scottish Arts Council Award. Born in Inverness, Scotland, in 1962, Smith now lives in Cambridge, England.