March 2, 2006

The Accidental
By Ali Smith
Pantheon Books 2005
Hardcover, 320 pages, $22.95

By AUSTIN WALTERS
Contributing Writer

Within the first few pages of Ali Smith’s newest novel, The Accidental, there is a photograph of a lone sheep standing in a barren wasteland, staring through a sinister fence. The animal appears to be a vagrant, lost or left behind, scrutinizing the world from a stranger’s perspective.

Smith’s newest story follows a similar form as an enigmatic stranger uses an outsider’s sharp perspective to unravel the very core of a typical family and force them all to see their world in a new light. This “accidental” interloper tells nothing but lies and has the light touch of a very experienced thief, but the impression she leaves behind is profoundly unforgettable.

Smith’s powerful voice rotates through each of the four family members involved, in sections titled “The Beginning,” “The Middle,” and “The End.” The writing style confines the reader to one character’s thoughts at a time, the collective whole revealed only in short, overlapping moments.

Amber arrives at the doorstep of the Smart family’s summer home barefoot and travel weary and says “Sorry I’m late.” Eve, the mother, immediately recognizes Amber as one of her philandering husband Michael’s latest conquests, while Michael assumes she is part of Eve’s latest book project. The sullen kids, Astrid and Magnus, are just happy for a distraction from their boredom and depression.

The precocious 12-year-old Astrid takes to Amber at once, finding her hard-edged beauty alluring, and her rebellious attitude exhilarating. Together they set out on short trips through the village and surrounding countryside, where the sharp-eyed Amber exposes the young girl’s insecurities while showing her how to overcome her fear.

Magnus, 17, thinks Amber is an angel of sorts when she walks into the bathroom as he is trying to kill himself. Consumed with self-loathing over his involvement in a school prank that led to a classmate’s suicide, he can’t seem to go on. As he stands on the edge of the tub, noose around his neck, Amber touches his leg and simply asks him if he wants help. She does not offer any pity or judgment, and Magnus can easily allow her to help him down from the edge, out of his urine-soaked pants and back into the world of the living.

When Amber trains her sharp lens onto Michael and Eve, her observations are relentless and cruel, but also strangely liberating and suggestive. Eve faces her disappointing career and forces herself to take a step in a new direction. Michael, prone to annoying philosophical musings, explores the limits of his life as a cliché and is refreshed and amused by his own imminent professional downfall.

When Amber’s cover is finally blown and she is forced to leave, the family assumes that she is gone forever. But upon returning home to London they are faced with one final mystifying reminder of her strange powers. Their flat has been stripped bare, down to the doorknobs, except for the answering machine and its blinking red light.

The Accidental won Britain’s Whitbread Award and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, showcasing Ali Smith’s quiet emergence as one of the most talented imaginative writers of her time. In turning the final page of this fascinating book, readers far and wide will be eagerly awaiting her next effort. n