000			02383n m a2200253 a 4500
001			026500
005			20231009192516.0
008			091012t2005----nyu-----------000-u-eng-u
020			_a9780375422256
082	0		_aFIC SMI
100	1		_aSmith, Ali _d, 1962-
245	1	4	_aThe accidental _c/ Ali Smith
260			_aNew York _b: Pantheon Books _c, c2005.
300			_a305 p. _c; 22 cm.
520			_aWinner of the Whitbread Award for best novel and a finalist for the Man Booker Prize,The Accidentalis the virtuoso new novel by the singularly gifted Ali Smith. Jonathan Safran Foer has called her writing thrilling. Jeanette Winterson has praised her for her style, ideas, and punch. Here, in a novel at once profound, playful, and exhilaratingly inventive, she transfixes us with a portrait of a family unraveled by a mysterious visitor. Amber thirtysomething and barefoot shows up at the door of the Norfolk cottage that the Smarts are renting for the summer. She talks her way in. She tells nothing but lies. She stays for dinner. Eve Smart, the author of a best-selling series of biographical reconstructions, thinks Amber is a student with whom her husband, Michael, is sleeping. Michael, an English professor, knows only that her car broke down. Daughter Astrid, age twelve, thinks she's her mother's friend. Son Magnus, age seventeen, thinks she's an angel. As Amber insinuates herself into the family, the questions of who she is and how she's come to be there drop away. Instead, dazzled by her seeming exoticism, the Smarts begin to examine the accidents of their lives through the searing lens of Amber's perceptions. When Eve finally banishes her from the cottage, Amber disappears from their sight, but not they discover when they return home to London from their profoundly altered lives. Fearlessly intelligent and written with an irresistible blend of lyricism and whimsy,The Accidentalis a tour de force of literary improvisation that explores the nature of truth, the role of chance, and the transformative power of storytelling. From the Hardcover edition.
650		4	_aStrangers _v--Fiction
650		4	_aSummer resorts _x--Fiction
650		4	_aWomen biographers _v--Fiction
650			_aTruthfulness and falsehood _v--Fiction
651		4	_aNorfold (England) _v--Fiction
655		7	_aPsychological fiction
655			_aDomestic fiction
942			_cMO
999			_c239863 _d239863