The Accidental by Ali Smith - Feb BOTM

[Diane]

Review thread: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Diane]

WHITBREAD AWARD WINNER
and a Man Booker Prize, Orange Prize, and James Tait Black Memorial Prize Finalist

Questions from Penguin Random House

1. Why has Ali Smith chosen The Accidental as her title? What accidents occur in the novel? Are these events really accidents? What are their consequences?

2. What effects does Smith create by telling the story through each family member’s point of view? How would the novel have been different if told through a single omniscient narrator?

3. In describing her Genuine Articles, Eve Smart claims that “fiction has the unique power of revealing something true” [p. 82]. How is it that fiction can often deliver deeper truths than nonfiction? What truths does The Accidental reveal?

4. Having dinner with his family, Magnus thinks that “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” [p. 138]. In what ways are Astrid, Eve, Michael, and Magnus broken? What has broken each of them? Why don’t they fit together?

5. How does Smith capture the angst of early adolescence so vividly in the character of Astrid? What kind of girl is she? What are her most engaging eccentricities? Why does she feel so casually hostile toward the rest of her family? Why is she so captivated by Amber?

6. How is Amber so easily able to ingratiate herself with the Smarts? What makes her such a compelling person for all of them?

7. Amber often tells the truth so directly that she is thought to be joking, as when she comes down to dinner with Magnus announcing that she found him in the bathroom trying to hang himself. Everyone laughs but in fact she is telling exactly what happened. What is the significance of this irony—that the truth, plainly stated, is impossible for the Smarts to believe?

8. Who is Amber? Is she a con artist, a pathological liar, a psychic, a soothsayer, a malevolent force of nature, a witch, an angel? What profound effects, good and bad, does she have on each member of the Smart family?

9. Remembering Bergman’s films, Eve asks: “Did dark times naturally result in dark art?” [p. 178]. Do they? Is The Accidental itself a dark novel about a dark time? If so, how so?

10. Why has Smith chosen Smart as the name of the family in the novel? In what ways are they smart and not so smart?

11. Amber appears to bring catastrophe to the Smart family. In what ways could it be argued that she has been good for them? What do they discover about themselves because of her? Have the Smarts unconsciously drawn Amber to them?

12. Magnus tries hard to suppress his feelings about contributing to a fellow student’s suicide. He “understands that if he ever let it be known that he feels anything at all, things will fly apart, the whole room will disintegrate, as if detonated” [p. 151]. In what ways is this refusal to feel, to know and acknowledge painful truths, a central theme in The Accidental? Do things fly apart when Magnus begins to feel the consequences of his actions?

13. What does The Accidental say about family life? In what ways are the Smarts both a typical and an atypical family?

14. Why does Smith choose to end the novel with Eve’s journey to America? What is likely to happen in the future to the Smart family?

[Pip]

1. The Accidental refers to an encounter between an interloper and a family of four. It is never explained explicitly why Amber chose the Smart family to bludge from, but her accidental meeting with each of them was memorable for everyone of them. The theme of what may happen by chance is an important one. The plot may be a reworking of the 1968 film, Theorem, in which an unexpected dinner guest destroys a middle class family. Amber/Alhambra notes that she was conceived in a movie theatre when her mother seduced the projectionist after being aroused by Terence Stamp, who was THAT dinner guest. Was this an accident too?
2. Each character is explored in each of the three sections of the book. The most successful is the first character, Astrid, who is a bored twelve-year-old who finds everything about the holiday house "sub-standard" and spends her time videoing everything ad nauseum. She is portrayed wonderfully and I could have read a whole library with her as the protagonist. But each family member is going through their own crisis, completely oblivious to what is happening to the other three. Because they know so little about each other, the tension is higher than it would have been with an omniscient narrator. And then there are the enigmatic first person narration which we can only assume is Amber.

[Pip]

3. The role of serendipity or unforeseen events shaping lives is a truth revealed by this work of fiction. Another is how fraught family dynamics can be, particularly when each member is unaware of the crises the others are facing. Another is the power of perception. Amber often speaks the truth bluntly, but the others cannot see the truth because of their preconceptions, for example, when Amber announces that she has saved Magnus from committing suicide or that she was the one who smashed Astrid's videocamera.
4. Each character is broken. Most vividly is Magnus, whose thoughtless collage has caused a suicide. Life can never be so reckless again - until it is! Astrid is trying to make sense of life by videoing everything. She has been bullied at school and has thrown her mobile phone in a rubbish bin, but not told her family. Michael is a serial philanderer, taking advantage of his students at the university where he teaches, and Eve is a successful novelist who is suffering from writers' block.

[Pip]

5. Astrid is full of half-formed ideas. She calls everything "sub-standard" until she discovers "ie" then "id est" and finally "preternaturally." She finds a confidante in Amber and tells her everything. Amber knocks on her head to convey that there is not much going on inside, but Astrid's mind is teeming with ideas.
6. Everyone thinks that Amber was invited by somebody else. Eve thinks she is one of Michael's conquests that he has invited to stay. Michael thinks that Amber is a journalist who has come to interview Eve. The children think that one or other of their parents has invited her, even though she sleeps in her car. She provides something important to each of them. Astrid has an adult who takes her seriously. Magnus has an experienced lover to rid him of his virginity. The fact that Amber uttely ignores Michael drives him crazy and he starts writing poetry about his longing. Eve is aroused into action when Amber kisses her. So Amber becomes the person that each family member needs.

[Pip]

14. I think I have allused to most of the other questions. The irony is that when Eve escaped to America to find her father's other family, she ingratiates herself (accidentally?) into a family in the same way that Amber did to hers.

[Gail]

1. The novel is partially about the perception of accidental versus directed activities. For the besieged family, Amber is a rare and wonderful/horrible accident. For Amber, finding the family may have been accidental and even what she does to it emotionally may have been an accident but she was motivated from the beginning to take their goods.

2. By hearing the story through multiple voices we get a broader picture of what is happening within each of the characters and how Amber is contributing to but also healing their brokenness.

3. Smith is playing with this idea throughout the novel. She is revealing the inner angst and what it is like to be an adolescent in a very chaotic world with few support structures. The parents are as filled with doubt as the teenagers and can therefore provide support but not always what is actually needed.

4. Each of the individuals is broken due to specific circumstances; a middle aged sexual crisis for Michael, writer's block for Eve, trying on adulthood for Astrid and for Magnus; the repercussions of a thoughtless act that will weigh him down for life.

5. Astrid is a very smart but typically insecure adolescent who doesn't know how to interact with the rest of the world. She has some success when placing a camera lens between her and reality but she thrives under Amber's attention and complete disregard for the niceties of the world. Astrid is finally given a model of behavior that she can use which her parents are incapable of giving her.

8. One of the best themes of the book is that we actually do not ever learn who Amber is. We don't learn where she came from or where she goes. We are lead to assume that she targeted the Smarts because a) she could - they were such a functional mess as a family that they all thought she was invited by someone else and b) because they were such a functional mess as a family that none of them stopped to ask "who is Amber really and what does she want from us". Astrid and Magnus were just ecstatic to have her company and even Michael was happy to gaze on her rough beauty. There are times when her honesty and knowledge makes her appear to be a good angel but there is also something a bit dark about her that one felt from the beginning.

9. The arts do reflect the world that they are birthed from either by focusing more closely or by pushing against the world around them.

14. The fact that Eve appears to be using Amber's skills for her own purposes was an interesting but not very satisfying ending. One feels that the "family", so to speak, will never be a family again.

[[deleted user]]

1. Amber being welcomed in is an accident and a case of mistaken identity everyone in the family believing she is someone else. If not for this "accident" the whole story would not have occurred.

2. We see multiple images of Amber through the eyes of the others and each family member views her differently so the events in the story are all seen differently depending who is telling us at the time. A single narrator would know everything and would eliminate the mystery.

3. For me fiction appeals in a way that non fiction doesn't I would read a fictional account to learn more about historical events and I would get more from it than reading an actual historical text. In this way I think fiction reaches more people but also allows for interpretation that the reader and author co-conspire to accept as reality.

4. Michael is having multiple affairs that will ultimately destroy his career. Eve has writers block. Astrid is becoming a teenager. Magnus is dealing with suicidal feelings after a prank has gone wrong. They are living separate lives together.

5. Astrid is fierce, independent, lively and curious. She appears to hate her family because what teenage girl doesn't. She is dealing with being different and change of loyalties among her friends leaving her outside the inner circle. Amber is an adult who doesn't play by the rules and that is infinitely appealing to a teenager. She gives Astrid the power to say yeah I am different and different is better.

6. I kept asking myself this throughout the book!! Amber is ultimately horrible to them all but they all play along. I can only guess sex appeal and charisma keep her there.

7. The truth is so outlandish or unacceptable that the Smarts would rather view it as a joke then examine what is really going on and what it means.

8. Amber is all of these good effects are that the children gain something from their time with her and accept who they are and get some confidence. Bad is everything else she does.


10. Academically they are smart but in practical matters they are naive.

11. Good for the kids. Possibly good for Even making her face up to things. Bad because the family will never be the same family again.

12. Eve suppresses what she knows about Michael's affairs. Michael suppresses the knowledge that Eve know. Magnus faces up to things the world doesn't end and he gets to move on.

13. Never met a family like them so for me they are all atypical.

14. I like the symmetry of it. Of Eve entering the lives of another family as a stranger it has a certain poetic-ness to it. I can see the family getting back together but as a different kind of family.

[Jane]

1. Why has Ali Smith chosen The Accidental as her title? What accidents occur in the novel? Are these events really accidents? What are their consequences?
I honestly don’t know why it’s the title. Magnus and his friends didn’t mean to cause the suicide of the classmate, so I guess that’s an accident. The family accepts Eve as a guest/friend/acquaintance, so one might argue that this is an accident, although it’s really a mistake.

2. What effects does Smith create by telling the story through each family member’s point of view? How would the novel have been different if told through a single omniscient narrator?
It often functions to highlight how isolated the family members are from each other. We see directly how little they know (even care) about what’s going on in the others’ lives. E.g., nobody knows that Eve isn’t working on a new book but just lying about. No one know that Magnus is losing his mind. Both Michael and Eve think Amber is there to see the other one. I guess a similar effect could be achieved with an omniscient narrator, but arguably the first-person narration makes us identify more deeply with each protagonist.

3. In describing her Genuine Articles, Eve Smart claims that “fiction has the unique power of revealing something true” [p. 82]. How is it that fiction can often deliver deeper truths than nonfiction? What truths does The Accidental reveal?
None for me.

4. Having dinner with his family, Magnus thinks that “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” [p. 138]. In what ways are Astrid, Eve, Michael, and Magnus broken? What has broken each of them? Why don’t they fit together?
Magnus is broken because he caused the suicide of his classmate. I’m not sure if Michael is broken or just an asshole. We don’t get much insight into why he feels the need to sleep with every young woman he runs into. Eve may have been broken by her first marriage/relationship with the kids’ father, who seems to have just abandoned them, but we don’t find out much about this. This abandonment may also have started breaking Astrid -- I don’t think she’s fully broken yet.

5. How does Smith capture the angst of early adolescence so vividly in the character of Astrid? What kind of girl is she? What are her most engaging eccentricities? Why does she feel so casually hostile toward the rest of her family? Why is she so captivated by Amber?
Astrid is very imaginative and seems to crave attention from anyone, her mother in particular. Amber pays attention to her and is intelligent and creative and apparently fearless.

6. How is Amber so easily able to ingratiate herself with the Smarts? What makes her such a compelling person for all of them?
She intuits their needs… maybe she is able to figure out what has broken them and unbreaks them?

7. Amber often tells the truth so directly that she is thought to be joking, as when she comes down to dinner with Magnus announcing that she found him in the bathroom trying to hang himself. Everyone laughs but in fact she is telling exactly what happened. What is the significance of this irony—that the truth, plainly stated, is impossible for the Smarts to believe?
That’s pretty much it. Nobody expects anyone to tell the truth so bluntly – e.g., when Amber tells Eve that she’s taking Magnus into town to have sex with him – so they assume she is joking.

8. Who is Amber? Is she a con artist, a pathological liar, a psychic, a soothsayer, a malevolent force of nature, a witch, an angel? What profound effects, good and bad, does she have on each member of the Smart family?
She helps Astrid be brave and stand up for herself. By seducing Magnus, she gives him a reason to live, at least for the time being. I didn’t understand her role in relation to Michael and Eve, except, perhaps, making them face up to what crappy adults they are.

9. Remembering Bergman’s films, Eve asks: “Did dark times naturally result in dark art?” [p. 178]. Do they? Is The Accidental itself a dark novel about a dark time? If so, how so?
It takes place in 2003 during the post-911 Iraq war, so I guess it could be considered a dark time. It’s funny (not funny) how that era seems so innocent in retrospect, given everything that has happened in the last several years (Trump, Brexit, Israel/Hamas, etc.), not to mention the alienating effects of social media, which wouldn’t have been that big of a deal when Smith was writing the book.

10. Why has Smith chosen Smart as the name of the family in the novel? In what ways are they smart and not so smart?
They like to think that they are intelligent – e.g., Michael is a professor, Eve is an author, Magnus was/is a star pupil, Astrid is precocious. But they are all pretty self-absorbed and easy to trick.

11. Amber appears to bring catastrophe to the Smart family. In what ways could it be argued that she has been good for them? What do they discover about themselves because of her? Have the Smarts unconsciously drawn Amber to them?
She makes Eve and Michael realize what fools they are – literally because they realize she’s been fooling all of them. She frees them of all their possessions that have been weighing them down, e.g. Astrid notes that NOT having her father’s letters is actually liberating.

12. Magnus tries hard to suppress his feelings about contributing to a fellow student’s suicide. He “understands that if he ever let it be known that he feels anything at all, things will fly apart, the whole room will disintegrate, as if detonated” [p. 151]. In what ways is this refusal to feel, to know and acknowledge painful truths, a central theme in The Accidental? Do things fly apart when Magnus begins to feel the consequences of his actions?
Not really. I mean, he feels the consequences so deeply at the beginning of the book he is almost insane – he can’t face reality and almost commits suicide. It seems all he needs to feel better is a bit of mothering by an attractive older woman … and then a bit of sex.

13. What does The Accidental say about family life? In what ways are the Smarts both a typical and an atypical family?
They seem pretty typical in some ways – all isolated from each other and absorbed in their own work, problems, relationships. The extent to which they are all hiding or trying to hide massive secrets from each other is a bit dramatic, but then it is fiction.

14. Why does Smith choose to end the novel with Eve’s journey to America? What is likely to happen in the future to the Smart family?
The children and Michael seem to have grown closer. Not sure why Eve leaves them to go to America except that she is running away from her legal problems and the controversy surrounding her book. I didn’t like a lot about this book (as may be obvious) but I did like how the end suggests she will become the new Amber.

[Diane]

1. Why has Ali Smith chosen The Accidental as her title? What accidents occur in the novel? Are these events really accidents? What are their consequences?

Some of the accidents that I picked up are Amber turns up at their house, Michael thinks she is Eve’s friend and Eve thinks she’s Michael's student. Amber tells Eve she was in a car accident, sells her Porch and vows not to live a regular life but in her Citron car. Astrid throws her camera away. Accidental pregnancy.

2. What effects does Smith create by telling the story through each family member’s point of view? How would the novel have been different if told through a single omniscient narrator?

I usually enjoy multiple narrations but the first two chapters were hard to get into, and I was not sure who was narrating. It wasn’t until chapter 3 that you hear how Amber ended up at their house.

4. Having dinner with his family, Magnus thinks that “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” [p. 138]. In what ways are Astrid, Eve, Michael, and Magnus broken? What has broken each of them? Why don’t they fit together?

I did not enjoy being in Michael’s head, his fondness of his students and all.

6. How is Amber so easily able to ingratiate herself with the Smarts? What makes her such a compelling person for all of them?

Eve realizes that Amber has not asked for anything, she was invited to stay.

7. Amber often tells the truth so directly that she is thought to be joking, as when she comes down to dinner with Magnus announcing that she found him in the bathroom trying to hang himself. Everyone laughs but in fact she is telling exactly what happened. What is the significance of this irony—that the truth, plainly stated, is impossible for the Smarts to believe?

I don’t think Amber announcing that she found Magnus trying to hang himself in the bathroom a major event as it went nowhere, I am not sure the point of mentioning this.

8. Who is Amber? Is she a con artist, a pathological liar, a psychic, a soothsayer, a malevolent force of nature, a witch, an angel? What profound effects, good and bad, does she have on each member of the Smart family?

I think Amber is probably a little bit of each.

9. Remembering Bergman’s films, Eve asks: “Did dark times naturally result in dark art?” [p. 178]. Do they? Is The Accidental itself a dark novel about a dark time? If so, how so?

It is definitely not a happy story and I don’t find the characters likable which is a theme in Ali’s books for me.

10. Why has Smith chosen Smart as the name of the family in the novel? In what ways are they smart and not so smart?

Well, a stranger was able to con themselves into their lives for quite a long time, I don’t think that was Smart.

11. Amber appears to bring catastrophe to the Smart family. In what ways could it be argued that she has been good for them? What do they discover about themselves because of her? Have the Smarts unconsciously drawn Amber to them?

There seems to be a lot of unresolved issues with the family, Amber seemed to have brought it all to a head.

14. Why does Smith choose to end the novel with Eve’s journey to America? What is likely to happen in the future to the Smart family?

I like Jane's answer to this that Eve is the new Amber.

[Pamela]

1. Why has Ali Smith chosen The Accidental as her title? What accidents occur in the novel? Are these events really accidents? What are their consequences?
I guess that Amber herself is set up as The Accidental, accidentally conceived in the cinema, but that this is ironic as she herself says “Everything is meant”. Her arrival appears to be an accident but the stripping of the flat suggests that she may have been planning things all along. So maybe Smith is challenging the idea of accident.

5. How does Smith capture the angst of early adolescence so vividly in the character of Astrid? What kind of girl is she? What are her most engaging eccentricities? Why does she feel so casually hostile toward the rest of her family? Why is she so captivated by Amber?
The precocious child is a trope of Smith’s and Astrid is a typical example - advanced in intellect and clever with language (like the Id est riff) but emotionally immature and socially awkward - a prey to bullies and unable to communicate with her family. I found her irritating rather than engaging, but I also felt sorry for her as she had no support from her parents and she felt more comfortable hiding behind the camera. Amber took notice of her and offered a way to survive even if she was a malign influence.

6. How is Amber so easily able to ingratiate herself with the Smarts? What makes her such a compelling person for all of them?
They are disunited and dysfunctional so it is easy for a manipulative person to offer each of them what they want and bypass the others. She also makes it clear that they have no power over her so she holds all the cards.

7. Amber often tells the truth so directly that she is thought to be joking, as when she comes down to dinner with Magnus announcing that she found him in the bathroom trying to hang himself. Everyone laughs but in fact she is telling exactly what happened. What is the significance of this irony—that the truth, plainly stated, is impossible for the Smarts to believe?
The Smarts do not communicate honestly with each other, so they avoid the truth and find ways to deflect and dismiss it. Even when the school call Magnus in, Eve and Michael are looking at ways to move on without confronting or discussing what he has done, which is the opposite of what he needs.

8. Who is Amber?
She is a con artist and manipulator, a kind of blank screen that the family project themselves on to (which fits with the cinematic references). I don’t think she has any actual supernatural abilities- witch or angel - but she is seen that way by Magnus and Astrid because they desperately need someone to believe in.

11. Amber appears to bring catastrophe to the Smart family. In what ways could it be argued that she has been good for them? What do they discover about themselves because of her? Have the Smarts unconsciously drawn Amber to them?
I think she has been good in some ways for the younger Smarts, less so for Eve and Michael. Astrid finds a way to confront the bullies that gives her the upper hand and no longer needs to hide behind the camera, and Magnus finds a way into adulthood (partly through losing his virginity but also because he gains the courage to confront what he’s done). His friendship with Jake was a positive step forward. Amber exposes the cracks in the family but Eve and Michael’s responses seem less positive and hopeful.

14. Why does Smith choose to end the novel with Eve’s journey to America? What is likely to happen in the future to the Smart family?
I agree with others that Eve is beginning to adopt the role of Amber in America. She has abandoned her responsibilities and continues to avoid the truth by creating a new image of herself. The Smart family is unlikely to heal while she remains there, so the younger members will grow up and go their own ways.