There But For The: A Novel

· Sold by Anchor
4.5
2 reviews
Ebook
256
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

From the acclaimed, award-winning author—when a dinner-party guest named Miles locks himself in an upstairs room and refuses to come out, he sets off a media frenzy. He also sets in motion a mesmerizing puzzle of a novel, one that harnesses acrobatic verbal playfulness to a truly affecting story.

Miles communicates only by cryptic notes slipped under the door. We see him through the eyes of four people who barely know him, ranging from a precocious child to a confused elderly woman. But while the characters’ wit and wordplay soar, their story remains profoundly grounded. As it probes our paradoxical need for both separation and true connection, There but for the balances cleverness with compassion, the surreal with the deeply, movingly real, in a way that only Ali Smith can.

Ratings and reviews

4.5
2 reviews
Joshua Archer
October 31, 2014
This book plays in experimental prose in ways which make it delightful to read. The four chapters revolve around the agent of the story, Miles Garth, but they are ultimately only loosely connected. The author shifts the narrative voice with capable agility, but the pacing suffers at times as a result. Regardless, the experience rewards the diligent reader. 4 leaning toward a 3.5.
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About the author

Ali Smith is the author of many works of fiction, including the novel Hotel World, which was short-listed for both the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize and won the Encore Award and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award, and The Accidental, which won the Whitbread Award and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. Her most recent novel, How to be both, was a Man Booker Prize finalist and winner of the Bailey Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Costa Novel Award, and the Saltire Literary Book of the Year Award. Born in Inverness, Scotland, Smith lives in Cambridge, England.

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