Review: The Accidental

The Accidental
Ali Smith
Orange Prize 2006 SL; Whitbread/Costa Winner 2005; Man Booker Prize 2005 SL; 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list
Rating: 3.5 Stars

Two words: Bizarre. Brilliant.

A family - 12 year old Astrid, 17 year old Magnus, their mother Eve, and their step-father Michael - is spending the summer in a rented house. A woman - Amber - shows up at the house, and because everyone in the family assumes she is there in relation to someone else, she stays for several weeks and insinuates herself into their lives.

What is truly stellar about this book is how it is constructed. It is divided into three parts - The Beginning, The Middle, and The End - and each part is then further divided into four parts, each told from the viewpoint of one of the family members. And it is all told in a delightful stream-of-consciousness style (or, more accurately, free indirect style). I was amazed and amused at the author's ability to convey these "brain ramblings" and to capture each character's unique voice and personality. And each chapter begins in the middle of a sentence, as though you've caught the narrator in the middle of a thought. There is even one part, told from Michael's viewpoint, that is written in sonnet form.

Amber is "the accidental" of the book's title. In music, an accidental, indicated by a sharp or flat notation added to a note, raises or lowers the tone from it's normal pitch.  Amber, through her interaction with each of the family members, takes them out of their "normal" ways of thinking and interacting, and alters them in a way which could be seen as "better" (raising the tone) or "worse" (lowering the tone).

Ultimately, the book is about brokenness, which Amber, in her own special way, reveals to each of them.  As Magnus thinks to himself one night when the family is having dinner, "Everybody at this table is in broken pieces which won’t go together, pieces which are nothing to do with each other, like they all come from different jigsaws, all muddled together into the one box by some assistant who couldn’t care less in a charity shop or wherever the place is that old jigsaws go to die."

The question the book asks is whether a broken family can be repaired, or if they must accept that they are simply individual pieces that each belong to a different whole.

"The Accidental" is cerebral and not an easy read, but it is certainly unique and worthwhile. Ali Smith is a remarkably talented author who deserves the many accolades this book received.