etaylorm's review
3.0
I’ve read too many Ali Smith books in a row to really know what I think of this one. Not my favourite, not my least favourite.
yur_gabrielle's review against another edition
dark
funny
hopeful
mysterious
5.0
i am incredibly surprised that i’m rating The Accidental so highly. it was a random (dare i saw accidental) charity shop purchase, and i truly believe it found me at the perfect time. a time when i needed it and didn’t even know it. kaleidoscopic, totally unhinged yet intricate and subtle in all of the right ways. prose and manipulation of form and syntax like i’ve never encountered before. this felt, ultimately, realer than real life. pulling from history, from streams of consciousness and total chaos (it’s brutally calculated. crystal sharp. i bet my future rereads will be all the more rewarding. it’s a novel to be dissected) only to come together in such a roundabout way, starting and ending at the beginning. charming and touching. perfectly clever and intentional. had the oddest coincidences with so many aspects of my personal life, like it was written just for me. i think it made me feel — at a very lost time — like i am implicated in a web of histories and stories and at the apex of constellations of things with and without crucial meaning. i laughed so much. and i come away from The Accidental altered in a precious, hard-to-explain, but totally logical in my brain way. i’m so happy to have stumbled upon this gem, of a book, of an author, in the way that i have.
sponberry's review
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
Ali Smith’s style of prose is captivating enough that it led me through the whole book with relative speed, but ultimately I was waiting for some kind of plot to appear that just didn’t materialise. There were some fairly disgusting characters in this, I found Amber to be an awful person, and the only two characters I could really connect with emotionally were the two children, Astrid and Magnus. Some trigger warnings on this too for anyone who wants to give it a go.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Bullying, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual content, and Sexism
jemini's review
3.0
The Accidental by Ali Smith: 3/5
Ali Smith’s writing is just so whimsical and experimental and really makes up for what she lacks in plot sometimes. Her writing is somehow fluid and disjointed at the same time and she’s really able to capture those subtle feelings that are often hard to put into words. I wasn’t invested in much of the characters with Astrid being the only one I really liked so it was a little difficult to get through. Solid book but really just because of the writing.
eren_reads's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
3.0
gerda7's review against another edition
3.0
Really loved most of the writing style - then hated some bits. The story left me a bit confused - history repeats?
mmchampion's review against another edition
1.0
I really wanted to like this one but didn’t. I read it on my Kindle and I wonder if it would have been better via Audible or in print. The creativity of punctuation or that lack thereof was lost on me. I struggled to follow the stories and truly understand what was happening. Kudos to those who understood and enjoyed the novel.
amalia1985's review against another edition
No. This is NOT Literature. Trying to create a story of a problematic family and an enticing, mysterious stranger is all well and good. Describing intercourse with underage boys in horrifyingly heinous sentences, paragraphs, pages is completely UNACCEPTABLE. Throwing pseudo-intellectual, stream-of-consciousness passages is NOT Art. It is porn. And porn is NOT Literature. It is NOT Art. It is a degradation of human existence. It is NOT fashionable or feministic or any kind of "down with the patriarchy" nonsense. Ali Smith has done so much better. This novel is the definition of trash. And one more indication of the dubious criteria that dictate the Booker lists. For shame...Truly. When reviewers shamelessly gush about a novel, they take the writer's life and personal choices into account and pay little to no attention to the material itself. So, let's praise someone we ''like'' despite the fact that their latest work is absolute toilet-paper quality...
There is nothing ''postmodern'' or ''funny'' in this novel. All I found was a grotesque ugliness and a desperate attempt to appear ''modern'' and ''unique''...I suppose amateur readers who would like to appear ''educated'' and ''It'' may enjoy this. Seasoned readers beg to differ.
alexsiddall's review against another edition
4.0
What a fine writer Smith is, so clever, so original. This is a pacy and sexy piece of work, entirely unlike anything else I've read, but with the same sorts of resonances as in Penelope Fitzgerald or Virginia Woolf: strong characters within their society but doing things their own way. Loved this.
tine29's review against another edition
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0