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Sep 21, 2011

karen rated it:

i did this book a great disservice.

at first, i plowed through it like a maniac, loving every minute of it. then, i put it down for about two days and totally lost my momentum, and when i returned, the shine was off the apple.

completely my fault.

it has been nearly a week since i have written a book review, and this feels like a less-than-triumphant return, but it is fitting - i need to be punished for my weekend hedonism and non-book-reading self. for sh More...

17 comments like (32 people liked it)

Dec 15, 2011

Teresa rated it:

If you're new to Ali Smith and think you might like her (I can easily see that she's not everyone's 'thing'), read her brilliant short stories, or the novels Hotel World or The Accidental first. I loved those.

And if you have read all of Ali Smith, as I have, I think you will find that this book is merely okay, even tedious near the end, and that maybe instead it could've been another brilliant short story. Because what feels like excessive padding and way too much language-play (e More...

12 comments like (7 people liked it)

Feb 03, 2012

Patrick rated it:

Will you remember me in a months time?
Yes.
Will you remember me in 6 months time?
Yes.
Will you remember me in a years time?
Yes.
Will you remember me in 2 years time?
Yes.
Will you remember me in 3 years time?
Yes.
Knock knock.
Who's there?
See, you've forgotten me already.

I used to work at a video store in college. It was a small mom and pop shop, and it was a great place to work. Since it was such a small operation, ther More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Nov 05, 2011

Emily rated it:

Oh, Ali Smith. You are an infuriating lover.

I know Frustration is half the fun. And I had so much fun.

But could you please just TRY to write in goddamned paragraphs?

I saw and felt the Disorientation, Stream of Consciousness and Frustration.

But I majored in poetry, and therefore I do not believe but KNOW that space allows for lyricism in all the ways your Matrix layout did not.

It's just a suggestion. Because otherwise I loved it all.
More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2012

Lisa rated it:

This is another one of those books getting good reviews, but for me, it didn't live up to the hype. This isn't your typical book in that there's not a plot per se. The author sometimes does away with punctuation and linear notions, and even though it centers around Miles Garth who locks himself up in a guest room during a dinner party, we never truly learn about him or his motivations.

Instead, we get the perspectives of four different people who had a brief interaction with him. Most More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 19, 2012

Larou added it

If you look really closely, this book does have a plot; it would go something like this: Man withdraws from dinner party to barricade himself in a guest room at his hosts’ house, stays for several months, then leaves without telling anyone. Which, no matter how you view it, really is not much in the way of a plot – but then plot is not what Ali Smith’s novel There but for the is about.[return][return]What the novel is about is history, both public and private, about knowledge of the world, of ou More...

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Feb 21, 2012

Beth rated it:

If a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane, then how much can happen when a man excuses himself from a dinner party and locks himself in his hosts' spare bedroom, behind a priceless antique door that they can't bear to see destroyed? This is not a novel that tolerates distraction. You have to shut out the rest of your world -- the dishes in the sink, the spouse or child trying to talk to you, the oven timer going off -- and dive deep into the ripple effects that throw themselves at More...

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Jan 21, 2012

Ben rated it:

It is such a simple premise. A dinner guest goes up the spare room and doesn’t come out. Not for days. Not for weeks. The owners have to pass food under the door for him and he passes notes back out, but he will not open that door. Then a cult springs up about him – the cult of Milo, though his name is actually Miles (Milo just sounds better, they reason, more like a name such a man would have). Only this being an Ali Smith novel, the presentation isn’t quite as simple as that. We meet a More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 24, 2011

Anita rated it:

Fiction for adults can be separated into two distinct worlds: literary and popular.

Literary fiction explores characters in depth. It’s not unusual for literary authors to write pages of character description, both physical and psychological. Literary fiction is often complex and multi-layered. While these books have a plot, the emphasis is on character more than story.

Popular fiction, on the other hand, is all about story. Ask a reader to describe popular—also known as “c More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 21, 2011

Jannekb rated it:

Ali Smith’s “there but for the” is a deliciously vivid, clever, and humane novel told from the perspectives of four different people who know (or knew) Miles, a man who decides to lock himself into a spare bedroom while at a stranger’s dinner party and then refuses to come out. Caveat: if you like things neatly tied up and all your questions answered with a certainty at the end of a book, or if you happen to have a strong aversion to puns, Ali Smith’s “there but for the” may not be for you. Th More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Nov 08, 2011

Zina rated it:

Ali Smith revels in language and why it matters. God help a translator! At the centre of this multi-layered story is the appearance at a dinner party of a young man whom nobody really knows (he has been brought along by a man he has only once met, a man who didn't want to come in the first place). Miles Garth gets up between the main course and the dessert and goes upstairs. Everyone assumes he has gone to the bathroom. Instead he has locked himself into the guest-room and doesn't come out again More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 26, 2011

Alice rated it:

I have always wanted to get into Ali Smith's books since I had to read her version of the myth of Iphis for a Latin class, yet, despite the number of her books that I own, this is the first I have finished. I always find her writing to be somewhat inaccessible. This seems to be a pattern in trendy authors. The harder to read and more incomprehensible your book is, the better. However, I did sit down and read this book end to end after several false starts and I am not entirely upset that I did s More...

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Oct 12, 2011

Felice rated it:

It’s been quite a Kaufman and Hart week for me. First the retelling of their play You Can't Take It With You in the form of Aravind Adiga's excellent new novel, Last Man In Tower and now the Kaufman and Hart classic, The Man Who Came To Dinner gets a makeover from author Ali Smith. Smith’s novel is There but for the. Yup. There but for the.

The Man Who Came to Dinner is the story of an unwanted guest. In the play the critic of the day (That day being the early 1940’s), Sheridan W More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 01, 2011

MJ rated it:

I hate to resort to crude Americanisms, but Ali Smith is the motherfucking BOMB. Her latest novel, circa October 2011, shares a structure all but identical to The Accidental—four sections with little one-two-page prefaces—but also shares its masterful grasp over narrative voice, language, style, humour, and subtly heartbreaking strangeness.

The title refers to the first word in a significant phrase deployed in each section of the novel. For example, in the first part ‘There I was’ is More...

7 comments like (11 people liked it)

Sep 13, 2011

switterbug (Betsey) rated it:

Scottish writer Ali Smith is a veteran writer of the unwanted house guest. In THE ACCIDENTAL, an uninvited woman shows up at a residence and turns the family upside down. In her latest novel, Miles Garth, a dinner party guest in Greenwich, leaves the dinner table, exits upstairs, locks himself in the spare room, and declines to leave. Miles is the nominal central figure of the novel, yet it is his “absent presence” and other paradoxes of human nature that are pivotal. His silence is the roar t More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Sep 11, 2011

Ian rated it:

Occasionally, as if by chance, books appear shortly after each other which address the same theme. It may be chance, but sometimes there will have been a common source - an event, an idea, a discussion or debate - which touched both authors at the same time a couple of years before the books were published. Julian Barnes (in The Sense of an Ending) deals with the (un)reliability of memory as the central theme of his novel. And Ali Smith in There But For The addresses the same issue, though for More...

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Dec 28, 2011

CJ rated it:

The fact is, this book makes me cry.

The fact is, this book is about being trapped by history. Or herstory. Yourstory and mystory. It's a mystery, mystory.

The fact is, it's brilliant (and infectious) the way Ali Smith plays with language. Puns, jokes, double entendres.

(The fact is, although I scold myself for the hours I've spent watching the racy and historically irresponsible series The Tudors, I wouldn't have caught the reference to Thomas Tallis had I not w More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 29, 2011

Philippa rated it:

I was initially intrigued by the plot: a friend of a friend brings a stranger to a dinner party. Halfway through, this stranger goes upstairs to the spare room, locks the door and won't come out. No one knows why, and months pass with him still in there and no one any the wiser. It made me think a little of The Slap - an incident at a social gathering that then has reverberations in the lives of every person who was present.

There but for the isn't quite like that though. It doesn More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 09, 2012

Lisa (scarlet21) rated it:

Clever - undoubtedly. Thought provoking - yes, in that you wonder what it's all about and is that the point of the book? I don't know.
Miles is the central figure of the books, ironically, because we don't really hear from him, or only through the thoughts of the other people he has come into brief contact with during his life.
One of these people is Mark, who invites Miles as his guest to a dreaded dinner party, even though he has known Miles for all of 3 hours. The dinner party is More...

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Jul 09, 2011

Monica rated it:

What can i possibly say about anything that Ali Smith writes that is not gushing and filled with admiration?

"There But For The" is yet another novel by this amazing author. Smith writes the way i think. She writes about the inner voices in our heads and hearts. She forgets the boundaries of punctuation and grammar and spins out words that weave together in such a connected way that i'm always blown away.

"The idea is simple: a man named Miles has been invite More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 25, 2011

Jason rated it:

A fascinating, unique, well constructed book filled with great writing, fresh wordplay and puns.

Ostensibly it is the story of Miles Garth, a guest at an English dinner party who gets up from the table in the middle of the meal, walks upstairs, and locks himself into the spare room (conveniently including a stationary bicycle and an en suite bathroom). Miles stays in the room for months, barely communicating with the outside world.

But really it is a kaleidoscope of a story aro More...

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Oct 26, 2011

Jody rated it:

*There but for the* is one of those novels in which nothing really happens. Miles Garth locks himself in a virtual stranger's guest bedroom for reason or reasons unknown, and that's about it as far as action or plot is concerned. The book is made up of several sections (each named for a word in the title) that is anchored by one of the related characters. These characters float in and out of each other's vignettes, adding information our perception of their lives and Miles'. It's an interesting More...

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Jan 20, 2012

Mateo rated it:

The writing style felt just a wee bit too “cute” to me; and I feel that's saying a lot as someone who enjoys non-mainstream writing styles (albeit it from less “wholesome “ writers such as David Wong, Chuck Palahniuk, Kathy Acker). The hype on this book is kind of obvious; it's total Oprah fare with a quirk. I would be wholly surprised if this wasn’t made into a film within the year.
I give it props for originality - the premise is that Miles Garth excuses himself at a dinner party (hoste More...

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Oct 12, 2011

Susan rated it:

The reviews led me to believe that this was a book about a guy who holes up in someone's spare bedroom during a dinner party. But it was more about point of view maybe or how you can ever know someone else, really. I wanted to reread it to see how the author constructed the parts: an opener of a boy (?) showing the holed-up man Miles how to fold a paper airplane; Anna remembering a trip with Miles and others; a boy "from the future" but probably Miles; a precocious nine year old girl More...

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Oct 04, 2011

Kara rated it:

If you love Kathryn Davis's fluid prose (Versailles and A Thin Place), and enjoy the non-conventional approaches of A Visit from the Goon Squad and One Day, and if you occasionally stopped while reading Erdrich's Shadow Tag to go back and wonder, "Did she really just say that?", then this is the book for you.

The book builds around the story a man who locks himself in a guest room during a dinner party, and Smith tells the stories of four people who know him in some way, each More...

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Oct 19, 2011

Andrew rated it:

I’m not entirely sure what I expected from this book, but it certainly wasn’t this. While the book is built around the framework created by odd behavior of Miles Garth, who locks himself in a spare room in a house where he is a dinner guest, this book isn’t a single coherent story. Instead, it is really a set of reflections by people who are impacted by this action, even if it isn’t immediately obvious how or why. While we never really get any deep insight into Miles or his action, we do lear More...

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Feb 17, 2012

Theresa rated it:

This one is hard to review. To say that it is the story of a man who locks himself in the spare bedroom of a home where he was a dinner guest, and then refuses to come out for months, is really to say nothing about the novel. That is really not what the story is about. The novel consists of four chapters, appropriately titled “There," "But," "For" and "The." Each is told by a different person who has only a peripheral connection with Miles, the man locked i More...

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Dec 22, 2011

Jill rated it:

Miles Garth is invited to a dinner party by a new acquaintance. Halfway through dinner, he excuses himself from the table and does not return. The family whose home it was discovers the next morning that he has locked himself in their spare bedroom, and his only communication says, basically, Am ok for water, will need food. As you know, I am a vegetarian. The rest of the story unfolds through peripheral characters who know Miles slightly or are attached to the neighborhood, as the family attem More...

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Jul 02, 2011

Elaine rated it:

I used to think that Ali Smith had enormous potential, but she's lost the thread -- penning books that are clever and cerebral, rather than using her verbal tics to get deeper (as HOtel World did). While this book has flashes of insight, the loggorrhea and punning (particularly the preternaturally brilliant and precious Brooke) tires more than it engrosses. It is also tiresome that the poor, the old, the gay and the black are all hyper-culturally and historically literate and sensitive and th More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 22, 2012

Jenya rated it:

Best.
Title.
Ever.

I loved this book, although it was one of those clever, quirky novels in which not much actually happens. For that reason, and because most of my faves are definitely narrative driven, I probably won't buy or reread the book (I got it from the library, of course). I do hope that my better half finds the time to read it, as he'd probably like it even more than I do.

The best thing about it is the book's structure, which ties in wonderfully with the t More...

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