The First Person and Other Stories

This collection of 12 intriguing short stories, by British novelist and Booker nominee Smith (Hotel World, 2001), is long on atmospherics and short on conventional plotting. In The Child, a woman goes grocery shopping, but her mundane chore turns surreal when she encounters an angelic-looking abandoned baby, whom she attempts to help. When the child begins spewing hateful misognynistic and racist jokes, the woman decides that reabandonment is the best way to go. In I Know Something You Don't Know, a mother distraught over her son's deadly illness calls up two alternative healers she finds in the Yellow Pages. One robs her blind, while the other makes only a feeble attempt to read the boy's fortune. If Smith excels at creating, both in her stories and in her readers, a sense of eerie dislocation, she can also stir up an enchanting sense of whimsy, as in The Third Person, which posits a dozen beguiling scenarios for the future of a relationship, noting the endlesss music that's there between people, waiting to be played. --Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2009 Booklist

Smith handily proves the truism that everyone has their own tale to tell in this bangup collection. From "The History of History," where a young narrator focuses on the fashion-related aspects of the beheading of Mary, queen of Scots, to block out problems at home, to "Writ," where a grown woman sits down for an involved chat with her 14-year-old self, the author takes readers on lyrical rides through the lives of everyday Britons. "The Child" begins with an ordinary situation-a trip to the grocery-and shoots into fantasy when an infant begins telling crass jokes. Others, such as "I Know Something You Don't Know," explore heartbreaking reality, in this case a desperate mother turning to phone-book healers and psychics to cure her son's illness. And in the title story, the narrator weighs her fears of being in a relationship against her apprehension at being alone. At once quirky and compulsively readable, this collection puts a layered and enjoyable spin on the many forms of the short story. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

The stories in this new collection from Smith, the Scottish-born author of the prize-winning novel The Accidental, are more challenging than conventional. In "The Child," one of those rare literary short stories that is quite funny, a woman shopping at the supermarket manages to acquire a toddler who is not as cherubic as he looks. In "Fidelio and Bess," the characters from Porgy and Bess begin to appear in Beethoven's opera Fidelio. Smith has a gift for clever phrasing, e.g., a character having an affair says that sometimes a marriage needs three hearts beating as one. Aspects of the surreal are present, but there is also enough of the real world to support the stories; in "Writ," a middle-aged woman has a disconcerting visit from her sullen 14-year-old self. This collection will appeal to anyone looking for imaginative short fiction that is experimental enough to be thought-provoking but also remains accessible to the discerning reader. Recommended for university and larger public libraries.-Leslie Patterson, Brown Univ. Lib., Providence (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A collection of 12 smartly constructed observations of the way we think and write, from Whitbread Awardwinning Scottish author Smith (The Accidental, 2006, etc.). The book offers compellingly quirky demonstrations of how our imaginations react to ordinary people and everyday occurrences. For example, in "True Short Story," an overheard conversation about the differences between the novel and the short story elicits complex counter-arguments and speculations from the narrator, who begins to consider the conversation's relevance to her close friend's painful treatment for cancer and to figures in Ovidian myth. In "No Exit," the question of whether a movie theater's "Exit" sign is actually a misdirection evokes the narrator's fear, empathy and imaginative powers. In three companion stories that include the title piece, "The Second Person" and "The Third Person," couples debate and fabricate possible future scenarios for their lives together and apart. Stories that employ essentially conventional plots range from a disappointingly undeveloped account of the confusions visited on the mother of a boy stricken with an undiagnosable debilitating illness ("I Know Something You Don't Know") and on the boy himself, to a virtually perfect Kafkaesque nightmare ("The Child") in which a woman shopper finds her cart occupied by someone else's baby, tries and fails to persuade others the child isn't hers, then helplessly "adopts" it brieflyhearing from its precociously foul mouth a litany of misogynistic and racist abuse that vividly renders every would-be mother's irrational fears about what she might be bringing into the world. The willed spareness of the stories grows annoying, but at her best Smith is an original observer of the blessings and curses of living inside one's imagination. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

This collection of 12 intriguing short stories, by British novelist and Booker nominee Smith (Hotel World, 2001), is long on atmospherics and short on conventional plotting. In "The Child," a woman goes grocery shopping, but her mundane chore turns surreal when she encounters an angelic-looking abandoned baby, whom she attempts to help. When the child begins spewing hateful misognynistic and racist jokes, the woman decides that reabandonment is the best way to go. In "I Know Something You Don t Know," a mother distraught over her son s deadly illness calls up two alternative healers she finds in the Yellow Pages. One robs her blind, while the other makes only a feeble attempt to read the boy s fortune. If Smith excels at creating, both in her stories and in her readers, a sense of eerie dislocation, she can also stir up an enchanting sense of whimsy, as in "The Third Person," which posits a dozen beguiling scenarios for the future of a relationship, noting the "endlesss music that s there between people, waiting to be played."

Whitbread award winner Smith returns with a story collection. Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

The stories in this new collection from Smith, the Scottish-born author of the prize-winning novel The Accidental, are more challenging than conventional. In "The Child," one of those rare literary short stories that is quite funny, a woman shopping at the supermarket manages to acquire a toddler who is not as cherubic as he looks. In "Fidelio and Bess," the characters from Porgy and Bess begin to appear in Beethoven's opera Fidelio. Smith has a gift for clever phrasing, e.g., a character having an affair says that sometimes a marriage needs three hearts beating as one. Aspects of the surreal are present, but there is also enough of the real world to support the stories; in "Writ," a middle-aged woman has a disconcerting visit from her sullen 14-year-old self. This collection will appeal to anyone looking for imaginative short fiction that is experimental enough to be thought-provoking but also remains accessible to the discerning reader. Recommended for university and larger public libraries.—Leslie Patterson, Brown Univ. Lib., Providence

Smith handily proves the truism that everyone has their own tale to tell in this bangup collection. From "The History of History," where a young narrator focuses on the fashion-related aspects of the beheading of Mary, queen of Scots, to block out problems at home, to "Writ," where a grown woman sits down for an involved chat with her 14-year-old self, the author takes readers on lyrical rides through the lives of everyday Britons. "The Child" begins with an ordinary situation—a trip to the grocery—and shoots into fantasy when an infant begins telling crass jokes. Others, such as "I Know Something You Don't Know," explore heartbreaking reality, in this case a desperate mother turning to phone-book healers and psychics to cure her son's illness. And in the title story, the narrator weighs her fears of being in a relationship against her apprehension at being alone. At once quirky and compulsively readable, this collection puts a layered and enjoyable spin on the many forms of the short story. (Jan.)