Product Description

Individually lucid and luminous, these formally inventive and exquisite tales resonate subtly together. In examining the distances and connections between ourselves and others, and lightly and expertly inching us closer to the bone, storytelling itself has never seemed so necessary, so moving or so joyous.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #261355 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06-24
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

About the Author
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962 and lives in Cambridge. She is the author of Free Love, Like, Other Stories and Other Stories, Hotel World and The Whole Story and Other Stories.

Customer Reviews

A meditative state
This book makes me smile and feel warm and light and full of life at the same time. It doesn't matter what Ali Smith writes, it all feels like being in some kind of meditative state. The attention to detail that we often overlook.

However the first two stories didn't get me going and it's only by being a fan of Ali Smith's other work that I had the will to read on and luckily I was rewarded. The third story "Blank card" about being sent flowers by someone unknown is beautiful.

I love her anarchistic way of telling a story, just picking out a piece of life - and you have to make up the conclusion yourself. My favourite is "The theme is power" where someone is telling a story to someone who's not at home yet. In fact it's two stories. One about two girls being approached by a strange lady and another one about a man showing his private parts. All through the story the narrative asks herself through her imaginative listener "but how do these stories go together". There's never an answer. Only the title gives you a clue ...

I also love the way how she very subtly reveals that most of her characters are gay. But as she often uses "you" instead of "she" it can be either way ...

The very last story "A story of love" is perfect. It is about story-telling itself and makes you wonder what a story really is.

Ali Smith does it again!
Ali Smith, estranged Scot,brilliant author! You will love her or hate her but there's no denying the awesome talent. Just when you think you are getting to know this lady, she rolls you over like a crocodile with its prey drowning you in the world of metaphor and imagery. This book is sensational in the stealth it possesses. It is a must read.

This is a brilliant book for anyone who likes short stories
This is a brilliant book for anyone who likes short stories and wants to think about the potential of the form. Ali Smith's charcters are literally haunted by stories which stand, as they did in her novel Like, for lost people - ghosts of lovers, of people caught in the grim passage of twentieth century history, of childhood adventures, of imagined future lovers. This is a collection which is entirely wide thinking and wide ranging whilst being so precise in its use of language and image. Something rare in contemporary British fiction, it also feels very European in tradition - is for anyone who wants to travel in the mind and the heart.