Public library and other stories - Hardcover

Smith, Ali

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241237467 ISBN 13: 9780241237465

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 2015

Synopsis

A richly inventive new collection of stories from Ali Smith, author of How to be both, winner of the Baileys Women's Prize and the Costa Novel Award and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

Why are books so very powerful?

What do the books we've read over our lives - our own personal libraries - make of us?

What does the unravelling of our tradition of public libraries, so hard-won but now in jeopardy, say about us?

The stories in Ali Smith's new collection are about what we do with books and what they do with us: how they travel with us; how they shock us, change us, challenge us, banish time while making us older, wiser and ageless all at once; how they remind us to pay attention to the world we make.

Public libraries are places of joy, freedom, community and discovery - and right now they are under threat from funding cuts and widespread closures across the UK and further afield. With this brilliantly inventive collection, Ali Smith joins the campaign to save our public libraries and celebrate their true place in our culture and history.

About this title

Review

Publisher's description. A story collection from the peerless, multi-award-winning Ali Smith. What do we do with books - and what do they do with us? How do books shock us, change us, challenge us, banish time while making us older, wiser and ageless all at once? And how might they remind us to pay attention to the world we make? (Penguin)

Each of Smith's stories is a gem: fast-paced and incongruous, every situation made immediately intriguing by deft detail and sharply humorous dialogue... With characteristic exuberance, Smith's own stories leap across time and space, delighting in unexpected connection (Financial Times)

A spritely, poignant collection...the stories themselves are magical...a wonderful book, it's alive to the ability words have to garland a life and make the ordinary bloom into something fresh and funny (Mail on Sunday)

A brilliant, comprehensive, unpredictable defence of public libraries. You can travel anywhere on Ali Smith's library ticket (Observer)

Smith's world is incredibly generous - it's a place where all sorts of stories and human connections are possible (Metro)

[An] audacious, distinctly Smithian and hugely entertaining collection...clever, mischievous, full of linguistic tricks and tics. A passionate defence of [libraries]... (Independent)

Ali Smith is now officially a national treasure... The tonal range and subtle arrangements of Smith's work are unique and peculiar. She is an expert in combining little glimmerings of rapture with rambling anecdotes, asides and learned disquisitions, to create an impression of density and depth (Guardian)

An inventive collection (Good Housekeeping)

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0241237467
• ISBN 13: 9780241237465
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240