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Available
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Publication
Hamish Hamilton UK (2012), 288 pages
Description
At a dinner party in the posh London suburb of Greenwich, Miles Garth suddenly leaves the table midway through the meal, locks himself in an upstairs room, and refuses to leave. An eclectic group of neighbors and friends slowly gathers around the house, and Miles' story is told from the points of view of four of them: Anna, a woman in her forties; Mark, a man in his sixties; May, a woman in her eighties; and a ten-year-old named Brooke. The thing is, none of these people knows Miles more than slightly. How much is it possible for us to know about a stranger? And what are the consequences of even the most casual, fleeting moments we share every day with one another?
Media reviews
This lively, moving narrative is filled with such details, with historical and musical lore and, above all, with puns. All the likable characters in “There but for the” enjoy a good verbal game, most happily with someone else. It is as though playing with language is what enables them to make
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their way through a complicated world. It’s a knack that might also be picked up, most enjoyably, by reading Ali Smith. Show Less
This is why I … hmm … ruminate. In dragging out this tedious, dated conversation – our only insight into Miles’s actions – is Smith trying to make the reader feel what Miles felt? Is it satire? Are the other guests merely symbolic of the world’s evils? Smith is a deeply moral writer who
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can’t always resist moralizing, but the truth is the job of revealing truth is better done with rounded, surprising characters, such as Michael Smart in The Accidental – the student-bonking professor who teaches a seminar on cliché – and not these wearying stereotypes.
But everything else I expect from Ali Smith, and love, is here: the helium quality of her prose, its playful grab-bagginess (it includes a pair of cryptic stories separate from the main narrative, as well as instructions from the author to the typesetters), how she manages to write so lightly about subjects that are by no means trivial – time, memory, history and their relationship to language. And also what perhaps sums up her whole oeuvre, from her novels to her many collections of highly inventive short stories, the long answer to this short question: “What’s the point of human beings? I mean, what are we for?” Show Less
In her new novel, There but for the, Ali Smith deploys the conceit to satirise contemporary culture – and to ask difficult questions about history, time, epistemology and narrative. The result is a playfully serious, or seriously playful, novel full of wit and pleasure, with some premeditated
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frustrations thrown in for good measure. Show Less
Symbol alert! Ali Smith’s new novel opens with a perplexing prologue: a story within a story about a man on an exercise bike whose eyes and mouth are covered by what look like mailbox flaps....The plot borrows a device Ms. Smith, a Scottish author who has been shortlisted for both the Orange and
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Booker prizes, used in an earlier novel, “The Accidental,” in which a stranger invites herself along on a family’s summer vacation...Yet there is a thematic point to all this showing off, or to most of it, anyway. “There but for the” is ultimately a book about loss and retention: about what we forget and what we remember, about the people who pass through our lives and what bits of them cling to our consciousness. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member brenzi
Let me play devil’s advocate here. Does the fact that the part that made the most sense was told by an eighty year old woman with dementia tell you anything about this book? How about the idea of page after page of stream of consciousness? Paragraphs that are pages long? How about a premise that
A man accompanies another man to a dinner party. After being introduced to the hosts and other guests, partway through the meal, he excuses himself, goes upstairs into a spare room and locks himself in. For months! I’m sorry, but in the U.S. anyway, the police would have been called and the guy would have been hauled away; end of story.
But I have suspended disbelief before and enjoyed books with preposterous plots. So maybe I’m being too skeptical. How is the author going to handle this? It soon becomes apparent that the people who tell the story have only a miniscule remembrance of the intruder, one Miles Garth. Somewhere in history their paths crossed, however briefly.
Somehow I’m soon drawn into the story and charmed by both the author’s clever use of language and the star of the novel, ten year old Brooke, wise beyond her years, precocious, and utterly charming. She has only just met Miles at the dinner party but her world view and her troubles in school with a teacher, who has no idea how to reign in her galloping intellect, immediately sucked me in.
Anna is originally stunned to get an e mail from the party’s hostess, who found her e mail address in Miles’ phone. She racks her brain trying to remember who in the world he is. Finally, she remembers how he befriended her on a school trip in 1980, when she was lonely and friendless.
Eighty year old May, suffering from dementia and at the end of her days, knows Miles because he has been with her on the worst day of her life. I found her story absolutely gripping.
Sixty-ish Mark, who brought Miles to the party after meeting him at a theater production, is still anguishing over the long ago suicide of his artist mother.
These four narrators tell a compelling story about isolation and connections and in making the connections, as you most certainly do as the book progresses, you can’t help but smile at the way Smith has wrapped you around her finger. Right towards the end of the book, as Brooke and Miles are discussing deep philosophical questions, the author gives us this:
”That was a very clever dream you had. Yes, Brooke said, but maybe is it too clever? No, Mr. Garth said, not at all, there’s no such thing as too clever anyway.”
Wait, did the author just wink at me? Is she…pulling my leg? Is she mocking her own cleverness? Oh and did I mention there’s not a quotation mark in the whole book? So not a conventional novel by any stretch, but a book that will make you think (there are more hidden meanings than you can shake a stick at and I'm sure I only discovered half of them), and scratch your head and smile. As the crowds gather to wait to see what happens to the unwanted guest you can’t help but think of the Occupy movement. I’m pretty sure the book was written well before that all started but it certainly was oh, I don’t know, prophetic, maybe. Recommended for adventurous readers.
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is absolutely laughable? Here it is:A man accompanies another man to a dinner party. After being introduced to the hosts and other guests, partway through the meal, he excuses himself, goes upstairs into a spare room and locks himself in. For months! I’m sorry, but in the U.S. anyway, the police would have been called and the guy would have been hauled away; end of story.
But I have suspended disbelief before and enjoyed books with preposterous plots. So maybe I’m being too skeptical. How is the author going to handle this? It soon becomes apparent that the people who tell the story have only a miniscule remembrance of the intruder, one Miles Garth. Somewhere in history their paths crossed, however briefly.
Somehow I’m soon drawn into the story and charmed by both the author’s clever use of language and the star of the novel, ten year old Brooke, wise beyond her years, precocious, and utterly charming. She has only just met Miles at the dinner party but her world view and her troubles in school with a teacher, who has no idea how to reign in her galloping intellect, immediately sucked me in.
Anna is originally stunned to get an e mail from the party’s hostess, who found her e mail address in Miles’ phone. She racks her brain trying to remember who in the world he is. Finally, she remembers how he befriended her on a school trip in 1980, when she was lonely and friendless.
Eighty year old May, suffering from dementia and at the end of her days, knows Miles because he has been with her on the worst day of her life. I found her story absolutely gripping.
Sixty-ish Mark, who brought Miles to the party after meeting him at a theater production, is still anguishing over the long ago suicide of his artist mother.
These four narrators tell a compelling story about isolation and connections and in making the connections, as you most certainly do as the book progresses, you can’t help but smile at the way Smith has wrapped you around her finger. Right towards the end of the book, as Brooke and Miles are discussing deep philosophical questions, the author gives us this:
”That was a very clever dream you had. Yes, Brooke said, but maybe is it too clever? No, Mr. Garth said, not at all, there’s no such thing as too clever anyway.”
Wait, did the author just wink at me? Is she…pulling my leg? Is she mocking her own cleverness? Oh and did I mention there’s not a quotation mark in the whole book? So not a conventional novel by any stretch, but a book that will make you think (there are more hidden meanings than you can shake a stick at and I'm sure I only discovered half of them), and scratch your head and smile. As the crowds gather to wait to see what happens to the unwanted guest you can’t help but think of the Occupy movement. I’m pretty sure the book was written well before that all started but it certainly was oh, I don’t know, prophetic, maybe. Recommended for adventurous readers.
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LibraryThing member Cariola
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
There but for the isn't an easy book for me to write about, because it is one of those rare books that one doesn't just read but actually experiences, participates in. It's not a book to be breezed through for the plot. You have to work at it, often backing up and
Taken separately, each of the words in the title seem nondescript; together, they seem empty without the expected conclusion--without, in other words, God or grace. And maybe that's exactly what Smith intended: to make us ponder the place ("there") of God and the location of grace in a society that is technologically advanced "but" individually isolating. (Think about the person with 5000 'friends' on Facebook.) It may be hard to find, but, ultimately, Smith concludes, grace is still there, within and between us.
The novel consists of four chapters, one for each word in the title, each focused on a different narrator. As many of the reviews below note, the basic premise is that a man attends a dinner party, walks upstairs between the main course and dessert, and locks himself into the spare bedroom, refusing to come out. But the real stories are inside the heads of the narrators. Anna ("There"), a fortyish single woman bored with her job, is surprised to learn that her email address has been found in the interloper's (Miles's) cell phone, pushing forth long-forgotten memories of the continental tour she won as a teenager. Mark ("but"), a gay man in his 60s still grieving the loss of his partner more than 20 years earlier, is haunted by the lyric-singing, rhyme-spouting, often-obscene ghost of his mother, a brilliant artist who committed suicide. May ("for") is a terminally ill 80-year old falling into dementia and memories of the daughter she lost, yet still sharp enough to observe and regret the changing world around her. Finally, the delightful Brooke Bayoude ("the"), who is either the CLEVEREST or the CLEVERIST, a girl who delights in the sounds and multiple meanings of words and wants to pin down the 'facts' of history, even as she comes to realize that facts, too, are mutable. Along the way, Smith deftly and subtly weaves in unexpected connections among these characters and even the novel's secondary characters.
I'm not one who generally likes fiction that philosophizes (see my recent review of Embers, for example.) Here, it takes you unawares, most often playfully, but sometimes melancholically. It's a rare book that can make you think, think about your own life, while you're being so well entertained. And as a wordsmith/word lover, I found Smith's puns, rhymes, jokes, allusions, double entendres, etc. thoroughly delightful. (Having vivid memories of riding in the backseat of the family car at about age nine, pondering the sounds of the word "jello," drawing it out in the voice in my head, I could really relate to Brooke.)
I haven't always been a fan of Smith's type of literary experimentation; in fact, the last of her works that I read, a short story collection, was off-putting simpy because it seemed to exist only for the purpose of experimentation, and while I liked The Accidental--another novel using multiple narrators--, I was somewhat disappointed in the ending. But for me, There but for the is about as close to perfection as it gets. Put aside your usual expectations, open your mind, and jump in. You won't regret it.
There but for the isn't an easy book for me to write about, because it is one of those rare books that one doesn't just read but actually experiences, participates in. It's not a book to be breezed through for the plot. You have to work at it, often backing up and
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rereading to make connections between events, characters, and words. But often that work surprises you by becoming infinite play, even as it leaves you with some startling observations about human nature, language, memory, and the world we live in.Taken separately, each of the words in the title seem nondescript; together, they seem empty without the expected conclusion--without, in other words, God or grace. And maybe that's exactly what Smith intended: to make us ponder the place ("there") of God and the location of grace in a society that is technologically advanced "but" individually isolating. (Think about the person with 5000 'friends' on Facebook.) It may be hard to find, but, ultimately, Smith concludes, grace is still there, within and between us.
The novel consists of four chapters, one for each word in the title, each focused on a different narrator. As many of the reviews below note, the basic premise is that a man attends a dinner party, walks upstairs between the main course and dessert, and locks himself into the spare bedroom, refusing to come out. But the real stories are inside the heads of the narrators. Anna ("There"), a fortyish single woman bored with her job, is surprised to learn that her email address has been found in the interloper's (Miles's) cell phone, pushing forth long-forgotten memories of the continental tour she won as a teenager. Mark ("but"), a gay man in his 60s still grieving the loss of his partner more than 20 years earlier, is haunted by the lyric-singing, rhyme-spouting, often-obscene ghost of his mother, a brilliant artist who committed suicide. May ("for") is a terminally ill 80-year old falling into dementia and memories of the daughter she lost, yet still sharp enough to observe and regret the changing world around her. Finally, the delightful Brooke Bayoude ("the"), who is either the CLEVEREST or the CLEVERIST, a girl who delights in the sounds and multiple meanings of words and wants to pin down the 'facts' of history, even as she comes to realize that facts, too, are mutable. Along the way, Smith deftly and subtly weaves in unexpected connections among these characters and even the novel's secondary characters.
I'm not one who generally likes fiction that philosophizes (see my recent review of Embers, for example.) Here, it takes you unawares, most often playfully, but sometimes melancholically. It's a rare book that can make you think, think about your own life, while you're being so well entertained. And as a wordsmith/word lover, I found Smith's puns, rhymes, jokes, allusions, double entendres, etc. thoroughly delightful. (Having vivid memories of riding in the backseat of the family car at about age nine, pondering the sounds of the word "jello," drawing it out in the voice in my head, I could really relate to Brooke.)
I haven't always been a fan of Smith's type of literary experimentation; in fact, the last of her works that I read, a short story collection, was off-putting simpy because it seemed to exist only for the purpose of experimentation, and while I liked The Accidental--another novel using multiple narrators--, I was somewhat disappointed in the ending. But for me, There but for the is about as close to perfection as it gets. Put aside your usual expectations, open your mind, and jump in. You won't regret it.
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LibraryThing member rosalita
Every time I think about trying to sum up or explain this book I come to a stuttering halt. There's a storyline, yes of course there is. A man goes to a dinner party and partway through he goes upstairs and
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locks himself in the spare bedroom. But while that sounds somewhat interesting it doesn't sound like much to hang a book on, does it? And yet, Ali Smith took that simple premise and crafted a work of art that made me smile with delight to the very last page. The story is told from several points of view, which can be a mess if not done right but in this case works perfectly as each person fills in a little bit of the story that you don't get from the other perspectives. And throughout there is delightful wordplay and puns and an all-around joyful celebration of the English language that I've seldom experienced. This isn't a typical linear story, which usually sets alarm bells ringing in my stodgy brain, but in this book for me the experimental aspects only served to enhance the story that Smith is telling instead of shouting "look at me! aren't I clever!". My only regret is that I'll never be able to read it again and experience that delighted confused happiness again for the first time. Show Less
LibraryThing member EBT1002
I loved this novel. P asked if she would like it and I said that I thought not, that it was "not solely plot-driven and philosophical and in people's heads a lot." Yes, well, that's a good summary after a couple of glasses of wine. Brooke is the 10-year-old narrator at the end of the book, and her
The novel unfolds in four "chapters" or segments; "but" was my least favorite until the last few pages. The only glitch in this contemporary narrative is the dialogue at the dinner party that leads to Miles Garth locking himself into a bedroom of his hosts. Boring. But it picks up again by the end of that segment, and never again lets up.
This is a novel about what is real; it's about metaphor and culture and history. Ali Smith loves language and she plays with it unmercifully without losing the train of the story. I laughed out loud; in the middle of the "for" chapter, I almost cried. May Young's narrative is especially moving to one, like me, who is coming to grips with late-middle-age and the prospect of death. She describes killing a rabbit in the garden and I nearly sobbed: "The gun didn't even kick. It was more a toy than a gun. But all the same the rabbit fell on its side, lay still on its side." And, on the very next page, before one has had a chance to come to terms with the fate of the rabbit, she provides commentary on the modern: "That was them these days, spending all their time looking up things on the intimate. The great-grandchildren, even, and them hardly past babies, spent their time on the intimate. It was all the intimate, and answer-phones and things you had to speak at rather than to. Nobody there."
I hate to admit it, but I wondered about the amount of time I spend on LibraryThing.....
Smith is a genius with words. She is genius at expressing what each of us has thought one or more times, but she makes it beautiful: "She {May} looked at the girl in the chair and she saw what youth was. it was oblivious, with things in its ears."
I doubt this review is capturing the profundity or the whimsicality of this novel. It displays both and it is a delight to read. But for that boring segment at the dinner party, and I'd be giving it five stars.
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voice is perfect; her critique of all things cultural, her exposure of all assumptions made, rings true and humorous and charming. The novel unfolds in four "chapters" or segments; "but" was my least favorite until the last few pages. The only glitch in this contemporary narrative is the dialogue at the dinner party that leads to Miles Garth locking himself into a bedroom of his hosts. Boring. But it picks up again by the end of that segment, and never again lets up.
This is a novel about what is real; it's about metaphor and culture and history. Ali Smith loves language and she plays with it unmercifully without losing the train of the story. I laughed out loud; in the middle of the "for" chapter, I almost cried. May Young's narrative is especially moving to one, like me, who is coming to grips with late-middle-age and the prospect of death. She describes killing a rabbit in the garden and I nearly sobbed: "The gun didn't even kick. It was more a toy than a gun. But all the same the rabbit fell on its side, lay still on its side." And, on the very next page, before one has had a chance to come to terms with the fate of the rabbit, she provides commentary on the modern: "That was them these days, spending all their time looking up things on the intimate. The great-grandchildren, even, and them hardly past babies, spent their time on the intimate. It was all the intimate, and answer-phones and things you had to speak at rather than to. Nobody there."
I hate to admit it, but I wondered about the amount of time I spend on LibraryThing.....
Smith is a genius with words. She is genius at expressing what each of us has thought one or more times, but she makes it beautiful: "She {May} looked at the girl in the chair and she saw what youth was. it was oblivious, with things in its ears."
I doubt this review is capturing the profundity or the whimsicality of this novel. It displays both and it is a delight to read. But for that boring segment at the dinner party, and I'd be giving it five stars.
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LibraryThing member noveltea
THERE were many, many things I loved about this novel.
BUT I did wish I could cut short or cut out quite a few scenes, life stories, conversations and streams of consciousness.
FOR me, the first section was the best part of the book; this was the section I least wanted to trim.
THE premise might not
BUT I did wish I could cut short or cut out quite a few scenes, life stories, conversations and streams of consciousness.
FOR me, the first section was the best part of the book; this was the section I least wanted to trim.
THE premise might not
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have worked for me even a year ago, but in light of the Occupy movement, I'm in awe of Smith's prescience (or lucky guess). Show Less
LibraryThing member mrstreme
Hold on to your thinking caps - you will need them for Ali Smith's latest novel, There But For The. Told from four different perspectives, this novel centers around the self-imprisonment of Miles Garth. A guest at a dinner party, Miles excuses himself from the table and ventures upstairs. While his
As each narrator's story begins, their connection to Miles becomes apparent. Each person represents a different age group: Anna in her forties, Mark in his sixties, May in her eighties and Brooke, who is 10. Interestingly, none of these narrators know Miles very well - their lives only crossing each other through small encounters. Indeed, you learn more about the narrators than you learn about Miles.
May's story was the most interesting and easiest to read. However, the entire book is not for the literary faint of heart. There is enough stream of consciousness to make James Joyce proud. Some sections of the story went over my head, specifically the dinner conversation during Mark's section, and the ramblings of 10-year-old Brooke tried my patience (she was a tad too precocious to be realistic).
With that said, there is no denying Ali Smith and her literary gusto. There But For The may be a difficult book to read and absorb, but it definitely was a provocative story. It left many questions unanswered and would make an excellent discussion for book clubs and upper-level English lit classes. If you aren't intimidated by literary fiction, then check out There But For The. It has some magic that will appeal to the right reader.
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hosts assume he used the restroom and then left without saying good-bye, they are surprised to learn that Miles has locked himself into their guest bedroom. And Miles doesn't plan on leaving anytime soon.As each narrator's story begins, their connection to Miles becomes apparent. Each person represents a different age group: Anna in her forties, Mark in his sixties, May in her eighties and Brooke, who is 10. Interestingly, none of these narrators know Miles very well - their lives only crossing each other through small encounters. Indeed, you learn more about the narrators than you learn about Miles.
May's story was the most interesting and easiest to read. However, the entire book is not for the literary faint of heart. There is enough stream of consciousness to make James Joyce proud. Some sections of the story went over my head, specifically the dinner conversation during Mark's section, and the ramblings of 10-year-old Brooke tried my patience (she was a tad too precocious to be realistic).
With that said, there is no denying Ali Smith and her literary gusto. There But For The may be a difficult book to read and absorb, but it definitely was a provocative story. It left many questions unanswered and would make an excellent discussion for book clubs and upper-level English lit classes. If you aren't intimidated by literary fiction, then check out There But For The. It has some magic that will appeal to the right reader.
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LibraryThing member Suva
Smith is one of the few contemporary writers capable of producing experimental yet accessible work. There but for the is based around a simple central conceit that become greater in significance as the book progresses. The characters at the centre of the story are always recognisable and real while
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the literary style that surrounds them constantly reminds the reader of the artifice at play in the story. The dinner party scene in the middle of the book is easily one of the most convincingly bitter-sweet I have ever read and the characters of Miles and Brooke are wonderful creations. I ended the book with the feeling that complacency is a sensible but sometimes terrible thing, while imagination and art can only been seen as luxuries in a society that has lost its way and itself. Show Less
LibraryThing member Larou
If you look really closely, this book does have a plot; it would go something like this: Man withdraws from dinner party to barricade himself in a guest room at his hosts’ house, stays for several months, then leaves without telling anyone. Which, no matter how you view it, really is not much in
What the novel is about is history, both public and private, about knowledge of the world, of ourselves and of other people, about how people are mean to each or kind to each other, and about how to cope. It is also about it five protagonists (as well as a host of secondary characters), four of which narrate one of the four sections of the book (each of the sections named after one of the four words of the title, and also being about that word in some way), the fifth being the person locking himself away in the guestroom. He is something like the empty centre of the novel, and each of the narrators stands in some kind of relation to him. The narrators not only have distinct personalities but also a distinctive voice of their own (although there also is an auctorial voice slipping in some passages in between parentheses) and one of the many things that make this a remarkable novel is the apparent with which Ali Smith manages to make each of her narrators sound like her or (in one case) his own individual while still maintaining her own unique writing style. The author’s mastery is also very much in evidence in the many descriptive passages in the book that can range from the hauntingly beautiful to the scathingly satirical, and while this is definitely not a realistic novel, it is still very evocative of places and atmosphere.
The narrators are spread across the whole human age range – 40, 60, 80 and 10 years old respectively. This not only gives the author the chance to illuminate the experience of present day life from all sides, so to speak (and indeed, considering its emphasis on seeing the same things from various perspectives and angles as well as its almost total absence of plot and its many descriptive passages I’d almost feel inclined to call There but for the a Cubist novel) but also shows a nice example of the way Smith throughout the novel builds structure and symmetry without becoming repetitive and predictable but instead uses them in surprising and significant ways. The above sequence of narrator ranges suggests death and rebirth to me – and indeed, in the books final section there is (something like) an opened tomb with the stone moved aside and (something more or less like) an angel announcing that the place is empty. There is also at least a hint of a cyclic movement involved which mirrors the circular structure the novel achieves (in what I thought was a very clever twist) at its end.
The novel is not just a formal exercise, though, far from it – not only is it politically very aware, taking a firm stance against racism and middle class hypocrisy but it also is emotionally very involving, delivering a very sympathetic portrait of its main characters, making the reader feel with and for them. It is a very touching novel without being manipulative and without making any compromises with conventional narrative structures.
There but for the is a great novel that is unflinching in the pursuit of its artistic vision and dares to stray off the beaten path and do something that is entirely its own, and does so with a rare and delightful mastery of language and imagery, an exuberant inventiveness in structure and composition while being at same time emotionally involving and enjoyable to read. By now it’s probably obvious to everyone that I loved this book, and am definitely going to read more of Ali Smith’s works.
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the way of a plot – but then plot is not what Ali Smith’s novel There but for the is about.What the novel is about is history, both public and private, about knowledge of the world, of ourselves and of other people, about how people are mean to each or kind to each other, and about how to cope. It is also about it five protagonists (as well as a host of secondary characters), four of which narrate one of the four sections of the book (each of the sections named after one of the four words of the title, and also being about that word in some way), the fifth being the person locking himself away in the guestroom. He is something like the empty centre of the novel, and each of the narrators stands in some kind of relation to him. The narrators not only have distinct personalities but also a distinctive voice of their own (although there also is an auctorial voice slipping in some passages in between parentheses) and one of the many things that make this a remarkable novel is the apparent with which Ali Smith manages to make each of her narrators sound like her or (in one case) his own individual while still maintaining her own unique writing style. The author’s mastery is also very much in evidence in the many descriptive passages in the book that can range from the hauntingly beautiful to the scathingly satirical, and while this is definitely not a realistic novel, it is still very evocative of places and atmosphere.
The narrators are spread across the whole human age range – 40, 60, 80 and 10 years old respectively. This not only gives the author the chance to illuminate the experience of present day life from all sides, so to speak (and indeed, considering its emphasis on seeing the same things from various perspectives and angles as well as its almost total absence of plot and its many descriptive passages I’d almost feel inclined to call There but for the a Cubist novel) but also shows a nice example of the way Smith throughout the novel builds structure and symmetry without becoming repetitive and predictable but instead uses them in surprising and significant ways. The above sequence of narrator ranges suggests death and rebirth to me – and indeed, in the books final section there is (something like) an opened tomb with the stone moved aside and (something more or less like) an angel announcing that the place is empty. There is also at least a hint of a cyclic movement involved which mirrors the circular structure the novel achieves (in what I thought was a very clever twist) at its end.
The novel is not just a formal exercise, though, far from it – not only is it politically very aware, taking a firm stance against racism and middle class hypocrisy but it also is emotionally very involving, delivering a very sympathetic portrait of its main characters, making the reader feel with and for them. It is a very touching novel without being manipulative and without making any compromises with conventional narrative structures.
There but for the is a great novel that is unflinching in the pursuit of its artistic vision and dares to stray off the beaten path and do something that is entirely its own, and does so with a rare and delightful mastery of language and imagery, an exuberant inventiveness in structure and composition while being at same time emotionally involving and enjoyable to read. By now it’s probably obvious to everyone that I loved this book, and am definitely going to read more of Ali Smith’s works.
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LibraryThing member SamSattler
Having read two of Ali Smith’s earlier novels, I knew not to expect anything resembling a conventional novel when I began There But For The. Smith is one of those novelists who seem to be just as concerned about style and experimentation with form as they are about plot and characters - and There
Many of Smith’s regular readers love her for her style. I have to say that I tolerate her style, but love her work, instead, for its memorable characters and unusual plotlines, both of which are strong points of this new novel. The story begins at a London dinner table, over which a group of near strangers are becoming better acquainted, when Miles Garth suddenly leaves the table. Only when Miles does not return within a reasonable amount of time, is it determined that he has locked himself inside one of the home’s upstairs rooms – a room he will remain inside for hours, that turn into days, and then into weeks. Desperate to rid her home of her newly acquired squatter, the dinner host first searches Miles’s address book for someone who can talk him out of the room.
That is how she finds Anna, the first of four narrators through whom we learn more about Miles Garth and how he ended up where he is. Anna, a fortyish woman who met Miles on a high school trip to France, at first barely remembers him but surprises herself by some of the things that come back to her. Mark, who is responsible for having invited Miles to the dinner party, is a gay man in his sixties. May, in her eighties, remembers the kindness shown her by Miles. And, finally, there is Brooke, a precocious little ten-year-old girl who only met Miles at the party but now feels somehow connected to him.
There But For The explores some basic questions, even to the meaning of life, but its main theme involves how differently those who pass through our lives might remember the experience than we remember it – and how little we really understand about ourselves and those with whom, over a lifetime, we share time. The novel’s relatively simple plot is deceptive; there is a lot going on here.
Rated at: 4.0
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But For The follows that pattern. For instance, despite that the plot is largely moved along via one-on-one conversation, not a single quotation mark will be found in this novel. Smith, too, seems to favor long, rambling, multi-page paragraphs that are as densely packed with content as their overwhelming appearance to the eye leads the reader to expect them to be. Personally, I find paragraphs of extreme length to be tiring, almost mind-numbing, after wading through anything more than a handful of pages of them. A lack of quotation marks, on the other hand, does not bother me when the author, as Smith does here, still makes it perfectly clear which character is speaking.Many of Smith’s regular readers love her for her style. I have to say that I tolerate her style, but love her work, instead, for its memorable characters and unusual plotlines, both of which are strong points of this new novel. The story begins at a London dinner table, over which a group of near strangers are becoming better acquainted, when Miles Garth suddenly leaves the table. Only when Miles does not return within a reasonable amount of time, is it determined that he has locked himself inside one of the home’s upstairs rooms – a room he will remain inside for hours, that turn into days, and then into weeks. Desperate to rid her home of her newly acquired squatter, the dinner host first searches Miles’s address book for someone who can talk him out of the room.
That is how she finds Anna, the first of four narrators through whom we learn more about Miles Garth and how he ended up where he is. Anna, a fortyish woman who met Miles on a high school trip to France, at first barely remembers him but surprises herself by some of the things that come back to her. Mark, who is responsible for having invited Miles to the dinner party, is a gay man in his sixties. May, in her eighties, remembers the kindness shown her by Miles. And, finally, there is Brooke, a precocious little ten-year-old girl who only met Miles at the party but now feels somehow connected to him.
There But For The explores some basic questions, even to the meaning of life, but its main theme involves how differently those who pass through our lives might remember the experience than we remember it – and how little we really understand about ourselves and those with whom, over a lifetime, we share time. The novel’s relatively simple plot is deceptive; there is a lot going on here.
Rated at: 4.0
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LibraryThing member SandDune
Another of those books that I can't make my mind up about. Did I really like it or did I not? Was it a beautifully constructed book or one that is just too clever for its own good? At the moment I'm leaning to the first of those opinions and my immediate reaction on finishing it is to want to read
In the prosperous London district of Greenwich Genevieve and Eric Lee are giving a dinner party: their annual party where they try to invite people a little different from those that they usually see. But after the main course one of the guests absents himself from the table, seemingly to go to the bathroom. When he does not reappear it is discovered that he has locked himself in the spare bedroom. And there he stays, refusing to come out, refusing to talk to anyone or explain himself, as the days, weeks, months pass. It soon becomes apparent that even the person who invited him to the dinner party really knows very little about him, and as the owners of the house become increasingly desperate to get rid of their unwanted house guest they resort to going through the contact list on his phone to try to connect with anyone who might be able to help.
The story is told, in a non-linear narrative, from the point of view of four people whose lives have interacted with the guest Miles. Anna, a forty-something woman, disillusioned with her job dealing with refugees, had met Miles on a coach tour of Europe thirty years before. Mark, a sixty year old gay photograph researcher, still mourning for his dead lover after twenty years, had invited him to the dinner party which he thought would be unbearable to attend on his own. For May Young, an eighty year old widow losing the fight with dementia, Mark had been a constant presence on a certain day of the year. And Brooke Bayoude, the precocious and clever ten year old daughter of the Lee's neighbours, who eventually shows that she has a better understanding of Miles than any of them. As each narrator tells their story we learn a little more of Miles's life but far more about the narrators themselves. This is not a book for those that like their endings neatly packaged.
So far, so good. But I did have my doubts. The hostess, Genevieve Lee, seems too much of a caricature to be taken seriously. And the dinner party (narrated by Mark) was slightly too much like an updated version of 'Abigail's Party': full of awful people not knowing how awful they were. The dinner party was my main problem with the book: it seems difficult to believe that at a dinner party in Greenwich, part of one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world, the white guests would be so unaccustomed to meeting anyone who was black. From asking if the Bayoude's had ever seen a tiger 'at home' (they come from Yorkshire) to wondering why they knew so much about the culture of Northern England rather than 'their culture', the conversation doesn't seem to fit the demographics of the group. And the gay Mark and the vegetarian Miles seemingly present equal challenges.
So overall an interesting and thought provoking (though slightly flawed) read and one which has certainly made me want to read more of Ali Smith's work.
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it again more slowly. In the prosperous London district of Greenwich Genevieve and Eric Lee are giving a dinner party: their annual party where they try to invite people a little different from those that they usually see. But after the main course one of the guests absents himself from the table, seemingly to go to the bathroom. When he does not reappear it is discovered that he has locked himself in the spare bedroom. And there he stays, refusing to come out, refusing to talk to anyone or explain himself, as the days, weeks, months pass. It soon becomes apparent that even the person who invited him to the dinner party really knows very little about him, and as the owners of the house become increasingly desperate to get rid of their unwanted house guest they resort to going through the contact list on his phone to try to connect with anyone who might be able to help.
The story is told, in a non-linear narrative, from the point of view of four people whose lives have interacted with the guest Miles. Anna, a forty-something woman, disillusioned with her job dealing with refugees, had met Miles on a coach tour of Europe thirty years before. Mark, a sixty year old gay photograph researcher, still mourning for his dead lover after twenty years, had invited him to the dinner party which he thought would be unbearable to attend on his own. For May Young, an eighty year old widow losing the fight with dementia, Mark had been a constant presence on a certain day of the year. And Brooke Bayoude, the precocious and clever ten year old daughter of the Lee's neighbours, who eventually shows that she has a better understanding of Miles than any of them. As each narrator tells their story we learn a little more of Miles's life but far more about the narrators themselves. This is not a book for those that like their endings neatly packaged.
So far, so good. But I did have my doubts. The hostess, Genevieve Lee, seems too much of a caricature to be taken seriously. And the dinner party (narrated by Mark) was slightly too much like an updated version of 'Abigail's Party': full of awful people not knowing how awful they were. The dinner party was my main problem with the book: it seems difficult to believe that at a dinner party in Greenwich, part of one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world, the white guests would be so unaccustomed to meeting anyone who was black. From asking if the Bayoude's had ever seen a tiger 'at home' (they come from Yorkshire) to wondering why they knew so much about the culture of Northern England rather than 'their culture', the conversation doesn't seem to fit the demographics of the group. And the gay Mark and the vegetarian Miles seemingly present equal challenges.
So overall an interesting and thought provoking (though slightly flawed) read and one which has certainly made me want to read more of Ali Smith's work.
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LibraryThing member TinaV95
I find it hard to summarize my thoughts on Ali Smith's "There But for The".... This is nothing against Smith's writing per se, and more about my difficulties in following the progression of the novel.
There are many reviews of this book so I won't digress into the plot vs. no plot debate. I will
I do need to state that Ali Smith's writing is indeed wonderful. Despite the novel's different narrators and styles, I found myself in awe at the end of the book wondering how in the world a writer could be so intelligent as to make the entire book so perplexing and thought provoking -- and yet still leave me with questions.
There are many reviews of this book so I won't digress into the plot vs. no plot debate. I will
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say, that I felt a bit schizophrenic while reading at times. Several times I had to stop to remind myself which character was talking and what other lesser characters were involved at a particular point in the story. Suffice it to say, I had to think -- and think a LOT. That's a wonderful thing in many cases, but I found portions of the book hard to make it through. But, perhaps I wasn't in the right frame of mind. Or maybe I just don't have the literary brain of Smith and many other readers. :)I do need to state that Ali Smith's writing is indeed wonderful. Despite the novel's different narrators and styles, I found myself in awe at the end of the book wondering how in the world a writer could be so intelligent as to make the entire book so perplexing and thought provoking -- and yet still leave me with questions.
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LibraryThing member Helena81
Deeply engaging and thought-provoking novel. I'm hesitant to even write a review straight after reading, because there's so much I want to mull over in the novel. I may even upgrade to 5 stars. The book reminds me of The Sound and the Fury with its multiple, difficult, narrators and central
Deep, layered, and highly enjoyable.
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unraveling story. It's a rewarding read, and more is explained than I feared. Each section ("there", "but", "for", and "the") is a joy in its own way, especially "for". I only wish I knew more; Smith leaves a lot of connections unmade for the reader to piece together. I'm not sure, for instance, how the short interlude before the "but" section (about the boy who looked into eyes and his grandfather) fits into the overall narrative. In a novel this consciously stylized, though, plot certainties are perhaps besides the point. Deep, layered, and highly enjoyable.
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LibraryThing member japaul22
This book didn't really work for me. It's the story of a man who goes to a dinner party as the guest of an invitee and ends up locking himself in the host's guest bedroom for months. The reader only finds out bits and pieces about this man through 4 people loosely connected to him. For me, the
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problem was that, although I'll admit the book was clever, it relied too heavily on the clever form and puns/word usage and never really got me engaged with the characters or had enough direction for me. It also left way too many loose ends in everyone's stories for my taste. Show Less
LibraryThing member karieh
I did not finish this book. I am admitting that up front for full disclosure. I thought about not writing this review because of that – but I read most of the book, and I really did try to finish this book…but it the end – there was just too much.
Sentences that went on too long. Paragraphs
But I’d read many good reviews of “There But for The” – and it seemed as if it was a book I would love – it was right there in the interesting title. And it was about a man who went to a dinner party and then never left. And no one knew why he wouldn’t leave.
“Did he want to know what it felt like to not be in the world? Had he closed the door on himself so he would know what it feels like, to be a prisoner?”
But after reading and reading and reading – I just felt as if I wasn’t getting anywhere. I barely knew what was going on. I’d glimpse some flashes of aspects that seemed something like belonging to the book I’d imagined, “His aunt has an ancient pug called Polly. The pug’s face looks ruined, melted. It looks like what Mark thinks the word tragedy would look like if it were a physical reality, a thing not just a word.”
But I just couldn’t finish. I read the back of my copy of the book again and I am sure it’s probably just me…but I think to understand the book I read most of…I will have to go back and read those other reviews once more.
Sentences that went on too long. Paragraphs
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that went on for pages. Thoughts inside of thoughts inside of thoughts – thoughts of characters who appear to be only tangentially connected to the story.But I’d read many good reviews of “There But for The” – and it seemed as if it was a book I would love – it was right there in the interesting title. And it was about a man who went to a dinner party and then never left. And no one knew why he wouldn’t leave.
“Did he want to know what it felt like to not be in the world? Had he closed the door on himself so he would know what it feels like, to be a prisoner?”
But after reading and reading and reading – I just felt as if I wasn’t getting anywhere. I barely knew what was going on. I’d glimpse some flashes of aspects that seemed something like belonging to the book I’d imagined, “His aunt has an ancient pug called Polly. The pug’s face looks ruined, melted. It looks like what Mark thinks the word tragedy would look like if it were a physical reality, a thing not just a word.”
But I just couldn’t finish. I read the back of my copy of the book again and I am sure it’s probably just me…but I think to understand the book I read most of…I will have to go back and read those other reviews once more.
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LibraryThing member SalemAthenaeum
At a dinner party in the posh London suburb of Greenwich, Miles Garth suddenly leaves the table midway through the meal, locks himself in an upstairs room, and refuses to leave. An eclectic group of neighbors and friends slowly gathers around the house, and Miles’s story is told from the points
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of view of four of them: Anna, a woman in her forties; Mark, a man in his sixties; May, a woman in her eighties; and a ten-year-old named Brooke. The thing is, none of these people knows Miles more than slightly. How much is it possible for us to know about a stranger? And what are the consequences of even the most casual, fleeting moments we share every day with one another? Show Less
LibraryThing member JBD1
For some reason I just couldn't get into this one. Maybe it was just not a good before-bed-reading book, I don't know. But it never quite held my attention. I'll give it another try sometime. Smith's delightful wordplay normally draws me right into her narratives, so I'm not sure what it was about
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this one that failed to grab me. Show Less
LibraryThing member GarySeverance
Ali Smith's novel is the type of book I look for in every genre. Whether it is mystery, romance, historical, young adult, or science fiction, a novel can be discovered that captures the life of the mind of the characters. After all, that is what the story of There but for the is all about, the
Four main characters varying in age, gender economic status, education, living style, and location have a common characteristic that is shared by the reader, a self-contained dialog. The voice in the heads of all four (five counting the reader) is not a monologue because it is spoken in sentences as if someone else can hear. Questions are sometimes answered and opinions shared as the outwardly nondescript characters speak their complex and observant language to themselves. While doing this, they maintain a largely passive countenance on the street and in the social intimacy of friends and family.
Songs provide fodder for the mental conversations and, "the problem now of course is, to simply hold your horses" as the characters carefully seek (but do not always find) like-minded souls who do not mind sharing mindful information. The chance meeting of people who can trade aspects of their inner voices become the characters' (and the reader's) most important hallmarks of personal history. Often brief, the shared thoughts when they occur leave lasting traces that in retrospect are life-changing.
Whether the character is young girl like 10 year old Brooke, an older woman like 80 year old May, a man in his 60s like Mark, or a woman in her 40s like Anna, there may be, if they are lucky, an internally charismatic but nebulous individual like Miles who can make statements that stimulate the characters' uttering of unedited inner observations. Whether Miles is a figment of of the characters' imaginations or they are figments of his, the communications with him face to face or symbolically are peak experiences.
The story takes place in London and is told from the points of view of the four characters so vitally affected by Miles. It is a beautiful, poignant group portrait of lonely people who become remarkably courageous as they involve themselves with Miles. It is not the courage of self-serving secret criticism of other people all day while putting on good faces. It is the stepping out of the confines of the head, sending little feelers to others hoping to find kindred spirits; telling someone, There you are.
But we are all at least partial shut-ins, physically and mentally. Is the shutting in an end or a beginning? For, if it is an end, then there would be no more honest conversation with others, only listening to yourself while looking out of hopeless eyes. The fact is you. Only by sharing your inner uninhibited dialog with a unique, courageous other (even symbolically like the reader of this novel) can you reveal this wonderful self-fact to the world and have that fact affirmed.
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rich, articulate communication inside the confines of the head and the affirmation by others of the contents.Four main characters varying in age, gender economic status, education, living style, and location have a common characteristic that is shared by the reader, a self-contained dialog. The voice in the heads of all four (five counting the reader) is not a monologue because it is spoken in sentences as if someone else can hear. Questions are sometimes answered and opinions shared as the outwardly nondescript characters speak their complex and observant language to themselves. While doing this, they maintain a largely passive countenance on the street and in the social intimacy of friends and family.
Songs provide fodder for the mental conversations and, "the problem now of course is, to simply hold your horses" as the characters carefully seek (but do not always find) like-minded souls who do not mind sharing mindful information. The chance meeting of people who can trade aspects of their inner voices become the characters' (and the reader's) most important hallmarks of personal history. Often brief, the shared thoughts when they occur leave lasting traces that in retrospect are life-changing.
Whether the character is young girl like 10 year old Brooke, an older woman like 80 year old May, a man in his 60s like Mark, or a woman in her 40s like Anna, there may be, if they are lucky, an internally charismatic but nebulous individual like Miles who can make statements that stimulate the characters' uttering of unedited inner observations. Whether Miles is a figment of of the characters' imaginations or they are figments of his, the communications with him face to face or symbolically are peak experiences.
The story takes place in London and is told from the points of view of the four characters so vitally affected by Miles. It is a beautiful, poignant group portrait of lonely people who become remarkably courageous as they involve themselves with Miles. It is not the courage of self-serving secret criticism of other people all day while putting on good faces. It is the stepping out of the confines of the head, sending little feelers to others hoping to find kindred spirits; telling someone, There you are.
But we are all at least partial shut-ins, physically and mentally. Is the shutting in an end or a beginning? For, if it is an end, then there would be no more honest conversation with others, only listening to yourself while looking out of hopeless eyes. The fact is you. Only by sharing your inner uninhibited dialog with a unique, courageous other (even symbolically like the reader of this novel) can you reveal this wonderful self-fact to the world and have that fact affirmed.
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LibraryThing member BrokenTune
"But the fact is, how do you know anything is true? Duh, obviously, records and so on, but how do you know that the records are true? Things are not just true because the internet says they are. Really the phrase should be, not the fact is, but the fact seems to be."
It is incredibly difficult to
So writing about how There But For The tells about the story of a man who is invited to a dinner party, gets up, and locks himself into a room in his host's house for months is an inadequate description.
Even going on to say that the book also tells the stories of the people around the mysterious hermit guest will not do. Instead, I am going to say that There But For The is a story about underdogs with at least three main characters - my favourite of which is Brooke.
Brooke is a highly intelligent, sensitive child who is bullied by a teacher. She starts to withdraw from her peers and her family and find solace in learning about history.
"So people in authority should be more careful because having your head on a coin doesn’t mean you are immune to history like people are immune to things they have been inoculated against by a doctor. Just because someone is in authority, for example in charge of you, and can get you by the arm when no one will know so that your arm afterwards really hurts, and shout in your ear, so loud so that it feels like a slap and your ear can feel the words in it for quite some time after, it doesn’t mean history won’t happen back to them."
But Brooke is not set on revenge. She is compassionate, inquisitive, and caring - traits she shares with the other heroes in Smith's story.
"What I am feeling is irrelevant, Brooke said, but if you are feeling for all those people, that is an astronomical amount of feeling.
It is an Alps of feeling, her mother said, and what you are feeling is never irrelevant, and I feel an Alps of feeling about that too."
And, yet, even with all those layers of characters and story lines and observing the subtleties of life yet, there is always more to an Ali Smith story than the story it self.
There is always the writing. I love Smith's ability to use words, to play with sounds and meanings and, best of all, to conjure up images which correspond with my sense of quirky humor.
"Now the Queen is sitting in front of a screen. There are a lot of courtiers asking her things and she is ignoring them because she is in the middle of playing Call Of Duty."
It is incredibly difficult to
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write about Ali Smith's books. I mean where do you start? Plots are not what they seem. Plots are merely vehicles to convey sub-plots, ideas, sentiments, and impressions of the world around us. So writing about how There But For The tells about the story of a man who is invited to a dinner party, gets up, and locks himself into a room in his host's house for months is an inadequate description.
Even going on to say that the book also tells the stories of the people around the mysterious hermit guest will not do. Instead, I am going to say that There But For The is a story about underdogs with at least three main characters - my favourite of which is Brooke.
Brooke is a highly intelligent, sensitive child who is bullied by a teacher. She starts to withdraw from her peers and her family and find solace in learning about history.
"So people in authority should be more careful because having your head on a coin doesn’t mean you are immune to history like people are immune to things they have been inoculated against by a doctor. Just because someone is in authority, for example in charge of you, and can get you by the arm when no one will know so that your arm afterwards really hurts, and shout in your ear, so loud so that it feels like a slap and your ear can feel the words in it for quite some time after, it doesn’t mean history won’t happen back to them."
But Brooke is not set on revenge. She is compassionate, inquisitive, and caring - traits she shares with the other heroes in Smith's story.
"What I am feeling is irrelevant, Brooke said, but if you are feeling for all those people, that is an astronomical amount of feeling.
It is an Alps of feeling, her mother said, and what you are feeling is never irrelevant, and I feel an Alps of feeling about that too."
And, yet, even with all those layers of characters and story lines and observing the subtleties of life yet, there is always more to an Ali Smith story than the story it self.
There is always the writing. I love Smith's ability to use words, to play with sounds and meanings and, best of all, to conjure up images which correspond with my sense of quirky humor.
"Now the Queen is sitting in front of a screen. There are a lot of courtiers asking her things and she is ignoring them because she is in the middle of playing Call Of Duty."
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LibraryThing member bragan
Between the main course and dessert of a dinner party at the fancy house of a couple he doesn't really know, a man goes upstairs, shuts himself into his hosts' spare room, and doesn't come out for months. But this novel isn't his story, exactly, even if he's in the center of it; it instead focuses
It's an interesting setup for a novel, structurally. And I'd heard a lot of praise for Ali Smith, so I went into this expecting, or at least wanting, to like it a lot. But I have to say, by and large it kind of left me cold. It's not that there isn't good stuff in it. There are certainly moments of interesting characterization or insight, some good turns of phrase and moments of humor (although the dinner party itself was a little too cringe-comedy for my tastes). But on the whole it just feels too self-consciously clever. (It even gets a bit meta, I think, about how self-consciously clever it is, which didn't help me feel any better about it.)
I'm wondering now if I didn't start with the right Ali Smith book, or if her writing maybe just isn't quite for me.
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on the stories of four people who have only slight acquaintances with him.It's an interesting setup for a novel, structurally. And I'd heard a lot of praise for Ali Smith, so I went into this expecting, or at least wanting, to like it a lot. But I have to say, by and large it kind of left me cold. It's not that there isn't good stuff in it. There are certainly moments of interesting characterization or insight, some good turns of phrase and moments of humor (although the dinner party itself was a little too cringe-comedy for my tastes). But on the whole it just feels too self-consciously clever. (It even gets a bit meta, I think, about how self-consciously clever it is, which didn't help me feel any better about it.)
I'm wondering now if I didn't start with the right Ali Smith book, or if her writing maybe just isn't quite for me.
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LibraryThing member lkernagh
Nope. This was a story that just did not work for me, and not just for the unconventional narration. What bugged me is what I found to be a decidedly unfocused story. More or a meandering ramble of random facts, thoughts and dialogue all jumbled together in a rush of words. Yes, the cornerstone of
It doesn’t speak well for a book if I have to resort to reading published reviews to try and understand the theme or meaning of the story. One reviewer has stated the story is “about loss and retention: about what we forget and what we remember, about the people who pass through our lives and what bits of them cling to our consciousness.” and that language is the main web we have for holding experience together (which may explain all the darn puns and wordplay).
Overall, I just did not get this one and now I am kind of leery of approaching another Ali Smith book.
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the story is Miles, the uninvited dinner guest who locks himself in a guest bedroom and refuses to leave. Definitely an awkward moment for the home owners, considering squatting in residential property in Britain only became a criminal offense as recently as 2012, so of course the idea for this story appealed to me. I am not sure how I was expecting the story to unfold, but what I read (listened to) was definitely not what I expected or wanted. I wasn’t expecting Smith to keep Miles “out of scene” for a big chunk of the story while the separate narratives follow their own individual focus. I also wasn’t in the mood for the very puny nature of the dialogue focused around the precocious 10-year-old Brooke. Maybe it is because I listened to the audiobook that I struggled so much, with a bunch of “said he, said she, said he, said she” starting to drone in my ears (dialogue more to be ‘read’ than ‘heard’, I think). By the end, I was just glad to be finished with the darn thing. Smith may be, as one reviewer has stated, a master of “dropped stitches” or deliberate gaps in the story where some connections don’t connect and apparent non-connections do, but for a “stories within a story” like this to work for me, I need something more that an interesting compilation of random thoughts and actions by the characters. Even the dinner party Miles excuses himself from (or maybe extracts is a better word) is just, I don’t know, a party I would have been looking for a way to leave early from myself, it was that bad. It doesn’t speak well for a book if I have to resort to reading published reviews to try and understand the theme or meaning of the story. One reviewer has stated the story is “about loss and retention: about what we forget and what we remember, about the people who pass through our lives and what bits of them cling to our consciousness.” and that language is the main web we have for holding experience together (which may explain all the darn puns and wordplay).
Overall, I just did not get this one and now I am kind of leery of approaching another Ali Smith book.
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LibraryThing member jasonlf
A fascinating, unique, well constructed book filled with great writing, fresh wordplay and puns.
Ostensibly it is the story of Miles Garth, a guest at an English dinner party who gets up from the table in the middle of the meal, walks upstairs, and locks himself into the spare room (conveniently
But really it is a kaleidoscope of a story around this, with short vignettes around several of the guests, people they know, jumping as far back in time as World War II, often interrupting each other with long parenthetical vignettes that last for pages. It has extensive dialogue but none of it is in quotes or indicated by any other punctuation. And in some parts the paragraphs seem to never end.
A dialogue in the middle of the book helps explain the concept, which revolves around adding the word "but" to the end of anything, and taking the idea in new directions (e.g., "I was invited to dinner," "I was invited to dinner but I don't want to go by myself," and "I was invited to dinner but I don't want to go by myself but I have no one to invite.")
The pieces never fully come together, we never understand exactly why Miles goes up into the room or why he eventually leaves it. But they do start to converge and disparate vignettes, characters and times are cleverly connected. And some of those characters and vignettes are particularly good, especially a precocious, young, girl Brooke who is the "cleverest" (in her words) punster and jokester and historian.
Ostensibly it is the story of Miles Garth, a guest at an English dinner party who gets up from the table in the middle of the meal, walks upstairs, and locks himself into the spare room (conveniently
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including a stationary bicycle and an en suite bathroom). Miles stays in the room for months, barely communicating with the outside world.But really it is a kaleidoscope of a story around this, with short vignettes around several of the guests, people they know, jumping as far back in time as World War II, often interrupting each other with long parenthetical vignettes that last for pages. It has extensive dialogue but none of it is in quotes or indicated by any other punctuation. And in some parts the paragraphs seem to never end.
A dialogue in the middle of the book helps explain the concept, which revolves around adding the word "but" to the end of anything, and taking the idea in new directions (e.g., "I was invited to dinner," "I was invited to dinner but I don't want to go by myself," and "I was invited to dinner but I don't want to go by myself but I have no one to invite.")
The pieces never fully come together, we never understand exactly why Miles goes up into the room or why he eventually leaves it. But they do start to converge and disparate vignettes, characters and times are cleverly connected. And some of those characters and vignettes are particularly good, especially a precocious, young, girl Brooke who is the "cleverest" (in her words) punster and jokester and historian.
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LibraryThing member alexrichman
In a piece hitting out against this year's Booker Prize judges, Jeanette Winterson said this book was 'better than anything on their list'. Although I've only read all of the contenders, I can believe it. This is a book with a wonderfully varied cast (apart from the caricatured 'baddies', a
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philandering dinner party guest and his insufferable host) and a rewarding, if uneventful, plot. Show Less
LibraryThing member Laura400
This is an absolutely marvelous book. There is stylish, really extraordinary writing. There is hilarious social satire. There are affecting characters. There are moving stories of loss and absence, of time passing, of the secret loneliness and sorrow we all carry around. It's one of the best novels
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I've read this year. Show Less
LibraryThing member tangledthread
Another piece of post modern fiction. No plot, just a bunch of different point of view chapters. Reminds me of A Visit from the Goon Squad.
I'm just not a fan of this style of writing.
I'm just not a fan of this style of writing.
LibraryThing member mjlivi
I'm still figuring out how I feel about this book. It almost entirely fails to deliver on its intriguing premise: a man (Miles) at a dinner party locks himself in the hosts' spare room and settles in for weeks. I was expecting this incident to be central to the book, but instead its the a hook that
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Smith uses to explore a handful of characters whose lives have been tangentially touched by Miles. Once I let go of my expectations though, I was swept along - the four characters we see the world through are richly drawn and engaging, the writing witty and elegant and the plot almost incidental. A few of the minor characters are broadly drawn and unsympathetic to the point of being caricatures (Richard and Jen particularly), but the central characters are so wonderful that it doesn't really matter. Enough to have me digging through the rest of Smith's work. Show Less
Awards
Women's Prize for Fiction (Longlist — 2012)
James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Shortlist — Fiction — 2012)
Scotland's National Book Awards (Shortlist — 2011)
Hawthornden Prize (2012)
Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year (Fiction — 2011)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2011
Physical description
384 p.; 5.09 inches
ISBN
0141025190 / 9780141025193
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Nw by Zadie Smith
DDC/MDS
| 823.914 |