Book: The Accidental by Ali Smith
Pages: 306
Finished: May, 2009
Challenges:
** Spring Reading Thing
** Book Awards
** Read and Review
** Support Your Local Library
** New Authors
First sentence: "My mother began me one evening in 1968 on a table in the cafe of the town's only cinema."
Well, I finished it. I didn't like it. I didn't like one single thing about it. The writing is monotonous and boring. The characters were so strangely disturbed and disturbing, none of which I ever came to care about. What family just lets a strange woman into their house and lives without knowing anything about her? (she is so, so, obnoxious and despicable) Who would let their 12 year old daughter go off for the day with that person, unsupervised?
All I can say is that every single character in this book deserves what they get in the end for being so totally self absorbed and stupid.
A sample of the writing:
"He has stopped beside a tree planted outside shops. It is nothing but a nondescript tree. A nondescript tree and Magnus. Its leaves, Magnus can note to himself now are connected to its twigs are connected to its branches are connected to its bigger branches are connected to its trunk and its trunk to its roots and its roots to the ground. Its species is connected to other members of its species and to other trees related by species and to other trees by virtue of being a tree and to other plants and living things by virtue of being things which respond to photosynthesis=all food."
I agree that the whole scenario was improbable - the entire family thought one of the others had invited her?? I didn't love the book, but was impressed at how Smith was able to get each of the 'voices' right.
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