There But for the - Softcover

Smith, Ali

Softcover

ISBN 10: 024114454X ISBN 13: 9780241144541

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Ltd, 2011

Synopsis

Imagine you give a dinner party and a friend of a friend brings a stranger to your house as his guest. He seems pleasant enough. Imagine that this stranger goes upstairs halfway through the dinner party and locks himself in one of your bedrooms and won't come out. Imagine you can't move him for days, weeks, months. If ever. This is what Miles does, in a chichi house in the historic borough of Greenwich, in the year 2009-10, in There but for the. Who is Miles, then? And what does it mean, exactly, to live with other people? Sharply satirical and sharply compassionate, with an eye to the meanings of the smallest of words and the slightest of resonances, There but for the fuses disparate perspectives in a crucially communal expression of identity and explores our very human attempts to navigate between despair and hope, enormity and intimacy, cliche and grace. Ali Smith's dazzling new novel is a funny, moving book about time, memory, thought, presence, quietness in a noisy time, and the importance of hearing ourselves think.

About this title

Review

Whimsically devastating. Playful, humorous, serious, profoundly clever and profoundly affecting (Guardian)

Remarkable. A brilliant novel: funny, serious, always surprising, always true (The Times)

I take my hat off to Ali Smith. Her writing lifts the soul (Evening Standard)

A playfully serious or seriously playful novel full of wit and pleasure. Wonderful (Observer)

Eccentric, adventurous, intoxicating, dazzling. This is a novel with serious ambitions that remains huge fun to read. The writing dances along (Literary Review)

Poignant, empathetic, funny. A book full of kindness and compassion (Time Out)

Fizzying, affectionate, sparkling. Smith presents her world view in words as fresh as lemons. A joyful read (Herald)

A tour de force (Lionel Shriver Financial Times)

A virtuoso piece of writing, both funny and gripping . . . Smith is a writer with a rich array of conventional strengths (Times Literary Supplement)

A must read (Toronto NOW)

About the Author

Ali Smith is the author of Free Love and Other Stories, Like, Other Stories and Other Stories, Hotel World, The Whole Story and Other Stories, The Accidental, Girl Meets Boy, The First Person and Other Stories, There but for the, Artful, How to be both, Public library and other stories and Autumn. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize and The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Folio Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton Ltd
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 024114454X
• ISBN 13: 9780241144541
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384