There but for the [Hardcover]

I have had an interesting relationship with Ali Smith before leading up to reading `There But For The'. I really liked her last novel `The Accidental', I loved `Girl Meets Boy' and thought `The First Person and Other Stories' was a lovely collection. However I really didn't get on with `Hotel World', to the point where I didn't finish it and one of her other short story collection I simply didn't get. So I was intrigued to see which way my experience with `There But For The' would go, I admit I was rather worried that the title might mean it was going to be a little experimental.

The premise of `There But For The' is a rather simple one. Imagine throwing a dinner party and having one of your guests vanishing after the starter to lock themselves in your spare room for months. This is the very position that Jen and Eric (can you see what Smith has done there?) find themselves in after they invite Mark, a `homosexual' they hardly know, who brings Mike along with him as his plus one even though he isn't and he barely knows him. It is Mike that disappears and starts the lock in, with no seeming cause as to why.

What I really liked about how Smith wrote this was that she tells the story through people who know Miles and not through him himself. Most of them hardly know him that well at all, or have for certain small parts of his life up to the dinner party. I won't say anything about them as it might give some of the joy of the `discovery' aspect of the book away. This provides little insights and a certain distance which rather than alienate the reader actually creates intrigue and a little bit of mystery. I wanted to read on. It was a risk but its one that I thought Ali Smith pulled off successfully and it certainly kept me reaching for the book at any opportunity. I think I ended up reading this in about five sittings.

The other master stroke, which I know other people have questioned a little (and you can see in the comments of John Self's post on `There But For The' we have had a discussion about it), was the characters of Jen and Eric `The Hosts'. I don't know if it was intentional, I can't speak for Smith on this one, but it was like she poured everything that's horrible about those smug middle class people who have dinner parties and invite diverse people (sexuality and religion wise) they don't know simply to almost see what happens, like they are an addition to the nights entertainment. I found this really comic and it added to the book's fun feel.

As soon as you mention the word `fun' in a novel people will mark it as not having enough literary merit. Not that I am saying that's what I search for in books. I would heartily disagree with this, and in fact use `There But For The' as a prime example of a book that is fun and is full of literary merit. Smith plays with words and the formation of language (typesetting etc), you can't get more `literary' than that, and has fun with it, the reader is made to engage with different forms of prose you might be reading a newspaper cutting about Mike and then when Mark's dead mother speaks in his head, brilliant character quirk, it is always in a rhyme.

Her characters are also very quirky and fully formed. One of the highlights of the book is where over about 40+ pages we are at the dinner party with all the guests on the evening everything happened.. This could have been really dull because it's full of random conversation pieces, bits of politics, buts of `world issues', drunken embarrassing over sharing and accidental stereotyping. It's entertaining, its maddening, its funny, its sad, most of all its insightful - especially in how much is said by what's unsaid. I had a feeling of `uh-oh' when it started but I utterly loved it. I don't think I have read anything quite like it. It's a piece of writing that some authors would have given their writing arm to, well, write. It's intricate.

I think `There But For The' is a great novel and so far it's my favourite of Ali Smith's works to date that I have read. She has taken bits of her earlier work; great characters, observations, comedy, unusual narratives, prose and pacing and put them all together. It's a tour-de-force as opposed to a hotch-potch. I don't want to say this is her most accessible book, even though in many ways it is, because that makes it sound like its not experimental and it is. It's just honed down, controlled and done without ego. I am very excited to see what she will come up with next.

......wit, word-play and intelligence you would expect from this author. An expert and elegant piece of writing, in a highly original voice. Perfect synthesis of medium and message. Repays re-reading and continues to entertain in a way very few contemporary novels do.

If you are the type of reader who thinks that the mark of a good book is a plot, then step away from this book: you'll hate it. Ali Smith's intricately clever and often funny "There but for the" is very much at the literary end of the fiction spectrum. Not in terms of the language used though - Smith uses simple language, and a LOT of puns, and if anything, as the title suggests, she's more interested in the little words. It's playful and strangely affecting, while at the same time a little affected and often slightly irritatingly free flowing.

Reading the publisher's blurb you will discern that at the heart of the book is a man, Miles, who is invited to a middle class dinner party and, between the main course and the desert, mysteriously removes himself from the frankly awful company and locks himself in the hosts' spare room from where he refuses to budge. But other than this happening, it's not so much a plot device as just something that occurred. The book itself is split into four parts, named "There", "but", "for" and "the", each focusing on someone who vaguely knew Miles although none knew him particularly well. This follows on from a bemusing introduction whose meaning only becomes clear at the end. It's almost like four short stories.

"There" concerns a girl, Anna, or Anna K (punning on anarchy) who met Miles briefly when they both won a writing competition in 1980 to describe life in 2000. Time is a recurring image in the book, which is set almost wholly in Greenwich. Anna is called in by the hostess, the awful Genevieve, known as Gen (her husband, Eric gives us another pun to discover: Gen - Eric) because Miles phone has her details stored in it, but she isn't a great deal of help as she was only "there" with him for a while. While visiting Gen, she also meets the precocious Brooke, a ten year old girl who is both charming and annoying in almost equal measure. More of her in a minute.

The second part is Mike's story. He is responsible for bringing Miles to the dinner party in the first place and we get the story of the events of that night as well as his meeting with Miles at the theatre. Mike has only met Miles for a few hours before the fateful night so doesn't really know him either. Having met Gen in the opening part, I was wondering why Miles would want to stay in the same city, let alone house, as this horrible woman. But once you meet her guests at the dinner party, she is comparatively charm personified. The party is excruciatingly awful. At one point I had to put the book down just to get away from them. The characters are variously homophobic, hypocritical, dull, money-driven, vacuous and spiteful. The exception is Brooke and her parents, two university lecturers.

"For" is the most strange of the lot in terms of its relation to Miles which only becomes suggested at the very end of the chapter. It is a beautifully written piece told from the point of view of an elderly woman suffering from dementia in a care home who is eventually taken on a trip to Greenwich to the camp of followers of "Milo" which has developed outside the house where Miles has taken unwelcome residence.

"The" is Brooke's time in the spotlight and is a rapid fire, almost stream of consciousness piece full of puns and bad jokes which sort of brings things together, but not entirely. It remains somewhat mysterious. We sense that she is picked on at school for being "too clever". She, like Smith, is obsessed with words and asks what is the point of fiction. It's probably lucky she hasn't read any Ali Smith because that would really have confused her! She is the voice and spirit of the book though.

Any literary fiction of this level of knowing cleverness treads a path between being brilliantly clever and a case of "the Emperor's New Clothes". Where that line is depends on the reader's own tastes. For me, Smith just about keeps on the right side, although there are a few wobbles along the way which prevented me from classing this as brilliant.

The idea of an outsider intruding is not new to Smith - she used a similar device in "The Accidental". What she does superbly is to play with language and themes. Songs and music are repeating motifs, as are the use of certain words and phrases. This if often quite subtle in effect. If pushed to identify what the book is about, it's difficult to say with any degree of confidence. She's fond of a metaphor, and perhaps describing the book like one of those Russian dolls is as good a metaphor as I can come up with. There are issues of time and memories, and in the whole worship of Milo thing, there are suggestions that there are comments on the current celebrity culture. Equally it is a celebration of language and linguistic games.

It's undoubtedly clever, and often both entertaining and amusing. I could understand it irritating some readers to the point of distraction, and at times it is frustratingly difficult to get hold of the storyline. It's a book that you have to let flow over you somewhat and, if possible, not judge until the final pages. Ultimately I enjoyed it but I'm not entirely sure why. As Brooke's mother tells her though, sometimes you just have to not worry about these things.