the accidental

Description

The Accidental is a 2005 novel by Scottish author Ali Smith. It follows a middle-class English family who are visited by an uninvited guest, Amber, while they are on holiday in a small village in Norfolk. Amber's arrival has a profound effect on all the family members. Eventually she is cast out the house by the mother, Eve. But the consequences of her appearance continue even after the family has returned home to London. The novel was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, the Man Booker Prize and James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and it won the Whitbread Award.

Excerpt

The beginning of things -- when is it exactly?

Description

Astrid's mother, Eve, is supposed to be writing the next in her series of "Genuine Articles", books that relate the lives of people who died in the second world war, but then carry on as though they had lived - which enables Smith to make some nice jokes at the expense of the biography industry. Eve's husband, Michael, is a philandering university teacher of literature; her son Magnus, thinks in mathematical terms and has done something terrible at school. Into this atomised family one day walks Amber, a thirtysomething blonde wastrel with no love of social niceties. She turns up on the doorstep claiming her car has broken down. Michael assumes she has come to interview Eve, while Eve assumes she is one of Michael's student mistresses; somehow Amber ends up staying with them in the rented cottage for several weeks. Everyone falls in love with Amber in a different way. But who is she, and what does she want?

Subjects

Genres

• Fiction

Other Editions

• the accidentalHardcoverHamish Hamilton2005-01-01
• De toevalligePaperbackMouria2005-01-01
• the accidentalHardcoverPantheon Books2006-01-01
• the accidentalHardcoverThorndike Press2006-01-01
• The accidentalHardcoverPantheon Books2006-01-01
• AccidentalPenguin Books, Limited2006-01-01