Ali Smith - There but for the

The List“Deals wittily with the difficulties of modern communication...” Our physical and philosophical breakdowns are sharply satirised in this almost mystical narrative dreamed up by one of contemporary literature’s most deft and astute analysts of human nature. Another Booker nomination may well await...

The Independent“Stopped me in my tracks with its glittering imagination and its warmth...” At points, the book veers into out-and-out social satire, but then Smith steers it back to serious drama. Along with her cleverness and wordy wit, there is a bewitching romanticism to Smith's world, where people truly connect...

Daily Express“This must be a contender for one of this year’s literary prizes...” Smith, who won the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2005 and has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is one of our most original writers. She manages to be inventive, profound, acutely observant, yet hugely readable...

The Telegraph“Smith’s prose is not just supple, it’s acrobatic...” one minute providing crisp realism – cocky teenagers, unspoken homophobia, university bureaucracy – the next a hypnotic stream-of-consciousness. Smith can make anything happen, which is why she is one of our most exciting writers today...

this is london“I take my hat off to Ali Smith. Her writing lifts the soul....” She's on the money, in her satirical, at times painfully acute, observations of haute bourgeois London life and this reader delighted, too, in the vividly contrasting portrait of the high-spirited, fearless, untrammelled Brooke...

Guardian“A seriously playful puzzle of a novel...” It is rare that, like Miles Garth, the largely invisible character-catalyst at the heart of Ali Smith's whimsically devastating new book, a reluctant guest simply removes himself upstairs, locks himself into the spare room and refuses to come out...