Customer Reviews

There But For The: A Novel

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

'There but for the' isn't an easy book for me to write about, because it is one of those rare books that one doesn't just read but actually experiences, participates in. It's not a book to be breezed through for the plot. You have to work at it, often backing up and rereading to make connections between events, characters, and words. But often that work surprises you by becoming infinite play, even as it leaves you with some startling observations about human nature, language, memory, and the world we live in.

Taken separately, each of the words in the title seem nondescript; together, they seem empty without the expected conclusion--without, in other words, God or grace. And maybe that's exactly what Smith intended: to make us ponder the place ("there") of God and the location of grace in a society that is technologically advanced "but" individually isolating. (Think about the person with 5000 'friends' on Facebook.) It may be hard to find, but, ultimately, Smith concludes, grace is still there, within and between us.

The novel consists of four chapters, one for each word in the title, each focused on a different narrator. As many of the reviews below note, the basic premise is that a man attends a dinner party, walks upstairs between the main course and dessert, and locks himself into the spare bedroom, refusing to come out. But the real stories are inside the heads of the narrators. Anna ("There"), a fortyish single woman bored with her job, is surprised to learn that her email address has been found in the interloper's (Miles's) cell phone, pushing forth long-forgotten memories of the continental tour she won as a teenager. Mark ("but"), a gay man in his 60s still grieving the loss of his partner more than 20 years earlier, is haunted by the lyric-singing, rhyme-spouting, often-obscene ghost of his mother, a brilliant artist who committed suicide. May ("for") is a terminally ill 80-year old falling into dementia and memories of the daughter she lost, yet still sharp enough to observe and regret the changing world around her. Finally, the delightful Brooke Bayoude ("the"), who is either the CLEVEREST or the CLEVERIST, a girl who delights in the sounds and multiple meanings of words and wants to pin down the 'facts' of history, even as she comes to realize that facts, too, are mutable. Along the way, Smith deftly and subtly weaves in unexpected connections among these characters and even the novel's secondary characters.

I'm not one who generally likes fiction that philosophizes. Here, it takes you unawares, most often playfully, but sometimes melancholically. It's a rare book that can make you think, think about your own life, while you're being so well entertained. And as a wordsmith/word lover, I found Smith's puns, rhymes, jokes, allusions, double entendres, etc. thoroughly delightful. (Having vivid memories of riding in the backseat of the family car at about age nine, pondering the sounds of the word "jello," drawing it out in the voice in my head, I could really relate to Brooke.)

I haven't always been a fan of Smith's type of literary experimentation; in fact, the last of her works that I read, a short story collection, was off-putting simpy because it seemed to exist only for the purpose of experimentation, and while I liked 'The Accidental'--another novel using multiple narrators--, I was somewhat disappointed in the ending. But for me, 'There but for the' is about as close to perfection as it gets. Put aside your usual expections, open your mind, and jump in. You won't regret it.

I'm not entirely sure what I expected from this book, but it certainly wasn't this. While the book is built around the framework created by odd behavior of Miles Garth, who locks himself in a spare room in a house where he is a dinner guest, this book isn't a single coherent story. Instead, it is really a set of reflections by people who are impacted by this action, even if it isn't immediately obvious how or why. While we never really get any deep insight into Miles or his action, we do learn a great deal about the people he has interacted with. But none of these people know Miles well, and while his actions cause them to reflect on their own lives, they do not have any answers to the questions raised by Miles's decision to barricade himself in a stranger's home.

Written in an almost "stream of consciousness" style, the pacing of this book was a bit uneven, with parts very readable and other portions dragging. There was a point in the middle where I wasn't sure if it was worth the effort to finish. The pacing did improve, though, and the final section proved to be the most entertaining, so it seems to have been worth plowing through.

This book is probably not for everyone, and I suspect that the response to this will be fairly polarized, with people either loving or really hating it. If you enjoy books that are full of character self-reflection, and don't mind the lack of any real plot, then this might appeal to you. However, if you need action in you books, then give this a pass.

Ali Smith is already an award winning writer, having earned the respect of scholars, critics and the public in the UK. "There But For The" is her newest novel, set in both the region and vernacular of suburban London, but marketing for this novel and her work is, at last, here in the Unitred State, where the subject, the gripping read and the brilliance of this work can finally be shared with the American public. "There But For The" is an unique and ingenious piece of literature and should be read by as many people as possible.

"The Grace Of God" is missing from the title; we all see that. In fact, as a title, it reaches out and slaps us in the face, stuns us for a moment as we realize that by filling in the rest of the famous phrase, we still have no answer. It isnt until the constant thinking that this book makes us ponder that "the Grace of God" may not be missing just from the title. God Is In The Details.

An upper middle class family gives a dinner party at their home; a party with place cards, full table setting, Limoges, Waterford, Laura Ashley linens. each guest has a water glass a light chilled glas of white wine and an empty wine glass, waiting (like virgins) for the burgandy that is breathing in the kitchen. One of the guests, Miles, has been brought by another guest- an aquaintence of a friend - because his style, history and interests were suggested to help create table conversation of class and interest. Miles is a vegetarian and like the exceptionally bright little girl at the far end of the table, is supplied with a plate of Romaine Lettuce and crumbled Bleu Cheese while the other giests eat their veal. The story- which is bizarre to the point that Joseph Heller reads like George Will - almost becomes secondary and parts of it read like a script by John Guarre. After a fascinating, modern and often uncomfortable dinner conversation, Miles excuses himself from the table and locks himself in the hosts guest room, where he remains for many weeks. In a tradition that would inpress Feydeau, the farce begins. The story is far less about him then the multitude of people who try to help our hosts in ejecting him from the homes and, with a subtle and brilliant subtext, from their concious. The bizarre brings laughter, of which there isplenty. It also brings about deep thought and reflection, which can cause tears of sadness or emotional growth: this is the surprise.

Some will call Ms Smith's newest work a mystery. The catagory brings to the surface the names of Patricia Cornwall, Martha Grimes, Agatha Christie, even Tom Harris. Almost no one would think, "My God, this woman is as brilliant as Shirley Jackson."

But she is. So this book- as far as the above named- is not a mystery, certainly no more so than any other piece of literature (Brecht aside)ever written.

Shirley Jackson is still underappreciated and misunderstood, given that the public's primary knowledge of her work is the 1948 short story, "The Lottery." This is, arguably, the most importanty, famous and disturbing short story ever written. Jackson's style of writing and her interests were far more psychological and subtle than the reputation she got as a writter of "Horror and Supernatural." (Even her book, "the Haunting of Hill house" is misunderstood today as a book about a personfied haunted house and not seen as a venture into the mind of a very ill young woman.) Shirley Jackson was one of the most gifted writers to have ever lived. Ali Smith is at her side. Congratulations,Ms Smith.

Not until I read the first third of "There But For The" have I found a writer who caused me to pause and say, "She's as gifted as Jackson!" (Ali Smith's writing causes the reader to pause a great deal.)I found myself thinking of the books in thirds, interesstingly enough; there are many literary importances to the number three. It would be silly to assign you all Jackson's "We Have Always Lived In The Castle" and Henry James' "The Turn Of The Screw" prior to assigning "There But For The"- just to make the brilliance of Ali Smith shine through more obviously, without the readers slow realization; the subtle moments when one's eyes rise fom the page and we realize that the bizarre conversations we're reading are reminiscent of conversations to which we've been privy all too recently. Instead, skip the Jackson and the James. Certainly Edgar Allan Poe, whom Ami Smith could out-write in the same room with the Pulitzer committee. No. This book feeds the soul and entertains the mind while tugguing at the heart. It is best when served by itself. The title a mild curiosity as we flip to the first page and note the atypical style: "No quotation marks, short paragraphs, description of thought rather than terain - this should be easy, light reading." The characters, the motives, the attitudes of each of these characters are served up just like the dining table in the story. Beautgiful on the surfaces with speed bumps and surprises, stains on the table clothg, just beneth. Ms. Smith uses punctuation like stage directions, adding to how even the way a page looks shocks us as did the title. The table becomes a greater ,etaphor: The things left uneaten, the preferences for food and why; the seperate glasses, the unconsumed glasses of water and wine, thecomment that nbrings the table to a tense moment of silence. Water is a commodity as important and marketable as is wine - for some, more so. We recognize it, though naever gave it much thought; just as is the indifference of a teeneager, inconveninced by having to remove the ear buds from her walkman. Everyone's mobile comes up frequently (for us Yanks, we'll remember to call them cell phones, though mobile is a better term given what we now use them for- the last thing these things are is a telephone. Mine is an answering service.) Yet it's a rare phone call that is made and the ring tones are more important then whomever is calling. The last twenty years of invention have been based on communications. The Internet, wireless phones and compuiters, e-mail, facebook, answering machines, text messaging, cellular devices that make films, photographs, edit, can give us driving directions when we're lost, connect us to Nationa Public Radio and allow us to answer our phones with a personlaized greeting: "Hello, Danniel." Yet these inventions have driven us further apart.They haven't improved our communcation. Don;t believ me? Just pick up your phone and try to call Verizon. A computer5 andwers the phone, kees you buy a while (like an airline feeding you and howing movies) and then finally tells you how imnportant your call is. You;'re approximate wait time is... Our new generatikon doesn't know how to engage in face to face negotiations or conversations, but they have thouands of "friends" on facebook and "lol" is as common as "FineThanksHowAreYou" used to be. These inventions make us move faster because now that we can multi-task we can do more; we can do far more. We can now be...mobile.

While reading "There But For The" (the first time. I promise you several readings, each one changing you and exciting you more)one should pay close attention to the "Child" whose name first appears during the second third of the novel, when we finally sit down at the famous dinner that did or didn't inspire Miles to dissapear upstairs. Names are of interest. Child is a suitable name.
Is the host Jan or Jen? How a question from one man can mean something else to another given how two peoples minds work differently. "Are You coming?" he said, referring to the dinner party? Where the hell was HIS mind? And how often did this particular subtlty occur to us or one we're with. (A friend of mine still speaks of someone who said, "Are you THROUGH yhet??"- the last thing he believed to be on either one's mind) There is a Harper Lee sense to this child in her dialogue while she colides with Shirley Jackson. The Child could be a metaphor. The dishes and even Miles himself could be a metaphor, but in reading this book it's clear to me that they are ALL metaphors, but specific in a different way depending upon the lives, the past and the philosophy of each individual reader. It would be a crime to impose more speculation upon a book of this calibre and a public as brilliant and carimng as is ours. Perhaps I am a metaphor.

Instead, Ali Smith should feel satisfied regarding "There But For The," since it is, arguably, one of the most importabnt books to be written since... well, "We Have Always Lived In the Castle." Yes, we've had authors who delve into the increasingly complicated minds of individuals- many of them with great skill: Wally Lamb, "The Hour I First Believed; Richard Russo, "The Bridge of Sighs"; "Barbara Kingsolver, "The Posonwood Bible"; Tom Harris, "The Silence of The Lambss"; John Irving, "A Prayer For Owen Meany" - after reading Ali Smith, however, the element of motive rises to the surface. As greatful as I am for "The Silence of the Lambs", and more so "Hannibal Rising" which is a brilliant examination of a mans mind and "why", but none of these works hold up a metaphoric mirror, making us look at our culture- our entire society. And though Ms Smith made no modifications for the trans-alantic journey (Thank you. Americans are capable of reading the word "sacked" and translating it to "Fired"- Many of us laugh at "Mind The Gap" so it's re-freshing not to be pandered to as the Broadway community does with it's UK imports; No amount of re-writing was goling to make "Sunset Boulevard" work on stage. Not even a seven million dollar set and Glenn Close) Ami Smith has written the most exciting book I have read in decades. I will keep this copy, always wish that I had gotten her to sign it, and re-read it many times, God willing, because like Orwell's "1984" this books is a classic commentary on the human condition at an important time in history.

And if all of this isn't enough, the book is funny, exotic and does, in fact, contains a mystery that would have baffled Jane Marple. However, as with all mysteries, the solution isn't what the book has to say, though if you guess it, it's got a little egotistical boost. For a while. It's about our own self interest: I was right! I said a few hours after the final episode of ABC's "LOST. I guessed the big secret in season one during the third episode. there were a thousand more guesses as to the answer to "the big question."

How humbling it was to me to discover than the "big secret" was just a fraction of what had to be said. I'll tell you now,'cause it doesn;t matter: (spoiler alert) The entire cast of "Lost" is dead and that Island is Limbo; the classroom behind the door at St. Peter's podium. So watch it and see how right I am. The tears you shed, the growth you feel, as you watch the finale have very little to do with the "Big Secret." I am not rambling. This is my attempt to write the way a "free" nind thinks- easing from subject to subject, pausing at passion, offering sarcasm at that which disgusts, and I write this way as another form of critical analysis for Ali Smith. It is not only she who wishes to excite and move her readers. Me? I just want to pique your interst.

That said, Ms Ali Smith, we thank you for providing the world a work of art at this level. We are confined to five stars, and I confess that I review only those books which I believe will allow me to grant four or five stars. You're the first time in 45 years I've wished to give a sixth star.

I didnt even do that with Shirley Jackson.

So folks, buy this book; get it first edition- try to get it signed. Buy a serperate copy for reading and purchase fifiteen copies to be given as gifts. In 25 years this book will have the multitude of values on a par with "Gone With The Wind", "The Color Purple" and "To Kill a Mockingbird."

The difference? This book is far better.

Scottish writer Ali Smith is a veteran writer of the unwanted house guest. In The Accidental, an uninvited woman shows up at a residence and turns the family upside down. In her latest novel, Miles Garth, a dinner party guest in Greenwich, leaves the dinner table, exits upstairs, locks himself in the spare room, and declines to leave. Miles is the nominal central figure of the novel, yet it is his "absent presence" and other paradoxes of human nature that are pivotal. His silence is the roar that emanates alienation.

The main characters of the four chapters, entitled There, But, For and The respectively, experience a pressing solitude (one character describes the Internet as "a whole new way of feeling lonely"). Three have met Miles at some point in their lives, but none of them know him intimately. Anna, who is also known as Anna K (as in Kafka's The Trial; or anarchy; or "Anna Key in the UK," a Sex Pistols cover), knew Miles briefly as a teenager when they both won an academic competition to travel to various European cities. She remembers him as confident, spirited, and arch.

Anna's former job at the Center for Temporary Permanence is reminiscent of Jonas's in How to Read the Air. As senior liaison, she condensed the trauma stories of individuals so that their narratives fit onto one page of a document. "You have exactly the right kind of absent presence," her former boss tells her, referring to her forced remoteness from her clients. Temporary permanence and absent presence amplify the tragic isolation of contemporary society. Now in her 40's, Anna is experiencing an existential crisis of identity and alienation.

Mark met Miles at a local theater production of A WINTER'S TALE, and initially tried to pick him up. They began a friendship over their opposite responses to a cell phone going off during the play, and Mark subsequently brought Miles to the dinner party hosted by Gen and Eric (Gen-Eric, a pun). Mark has been plagued for decades by his dead mother's voice whispering into his ear in rhyming couplets. Her absence is a constant presence in his life.

A dying, elderly woman's connection to Miles is not apparent at first. She is in the hospital, gradually losing her grip on reality, and determined not to be sent to a nursing home. Her status as sick and old illustrates the tacit ageism of society, as others regard her as invisible while they manage and condescend to her.

The true central character is Brooke, the less than decade-old daughter of one of the dinner party couples. Brooke is too remarkably precious and inauthentic-- a provocative child prodigy who thinks, talks, and usually writes like a post-grad student. She is familiar with the text and nuances of HAMLET, as well as other references to lofty literature and obscure esoterica. Can't children just be children in literature anymore? It borders on gimmicky.

Brook's dialogue and interior monologues, however, are weighted with the gravitas of the novel. She is loaded with punny ideas, time-slips, and her attraction to the Greenwich foot tunnel invokes the infinite coil of memory and history. Her behavior toward others is unimpeachable, yet drenched in irony. Unfortunately, Brooke feels less like a real character than a bridge between the text and Smith's ideas.

Smith is a high-wire artist of the nonlinear storyline, and a conjurer of experimental, hyperkinetic prose. The elastic and slanted wordplay revolve around isolation and identity. But Smith overtaxes the narrative with voguish stream-of-consciousness during the latter part of the story. It exaggerates and escalates to the point of burlesque, and removes the reader from the narrative tension into the staginess of its performance. The manic flow of prose floods the reader with its self-awareness.

Some of its parts are exquisite and heartbreaking, but the sum of its parts is less than some of its parts. The combination of typecast characters and pc heavy-handedness is stultifying. The middle-class white people are boorish philistines. The ethnic characters and those with alternate lifestyles, as well as the precocious Brooke, are paragons of temperance and sensitivity.

The themes prevail, but the lush linguistics and hurricane of words crushes the characters underfoot, and the clichéd stereotypes are laden with the very middle-class pieties that Smith aims to send up, allocated to types. Moreover, the visceral opening of the novel diminishes in her cerebral profusion of the last fourth of the book and threatens to vanish with Miles behind the closed door.

Ali Smith's work has always been refreshing and energizing, and in "The But For The" she has branched out in new and profoundly exciting ways. Her beguiling prose and uncanny sense of dialogue will steal your heart, making it almost impossible to stop reading, until you find yourself in the early hours of the morning, exhilarated, wondering if you can go to work on no sleep and survive only on the energy the pages have given you. (You can. I discovered that). It's that rarest of all books, one you yearn to re-read almost immediately the last page has ended. And indeed, that is exactly Smith's intent, as the stories circle round, nudging us to go back to page one with fresh eyes. Re-reading then becomes a truly enriching experience - the patterns in the prose leap out in greater detail, the humor is even more entertaining, and the ironies deeper.

I've bought several copies of this book. That's because each time I've "loaned" them to friends, knowing full well I'll never get them back. Yes, it's that good. So do not hesitate for one second. Buy this book.

As has been noted - this book is highly clever. I actually need to read it again. I was a little preoccupied by the structure and I think I missed a lot.

If you think you'll like it you probably will. If you think it will annoy you - you can live without it.

NO SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW: I enjoyed this book so much that I was sad to reach the end of it - and I can't say that about a lot of books that I read. The central story is that a dinner guest has left the table mid-meal, locked himself in a room, and refuses to leave or have more than minimal communication with the other guests, and the hosts/homeowners. While there is a serious theme, portions of the book are quite humorous. It doesn't fit neatly in any sinple category - mystery, drama or comedy. I like that about it.

The author did an excellent job of developing the main characters - particularly given that they vary in age from ten to 80-something. Writing from the perspective of someone of a different age than the author is a talent (or perhaps it would be better described as "a tremendous amount of work performed by a talented writer.")

The characters are all interesting, and, aside from the ten year old, each is likely similar in some way to someone the reader knows. As I progressed through the book I enjoyed "watching" the main characters "unfold" before me so much that I became less and less caught up in wondering why the dinner guest locked himself into one of his host's rooms. In terms of character development, this book brings to mind the novel "Bel Canto." Bel Canto (P.S.)

Having read two of Ali Smith's earlier novels, I knew not to expect anything resembling a conventional novel when I began There But For The. Smith is one of those novelists who seem to be just as concerned about style and experimentation with form as they are about plot and characters - and There But For The follows that pattern. For instance, despite that the plot is largely moved along via one-on-one conversation, not a single quotation mark will be found in this novel. Smith, too, seems to favor long, rambling, multi-page paragraphs that are as densely packed with content as their overwhelming appearance to the eye leads the reader to expect them to be. Personally, I find paragraphs of extreme length to be tiring, almost mind-numbing, after wading through anything more than a handful of pages of them. A lack of quotation marks, on the other hand, does not bother me when the author, as Smith does here, still makes it perfectly clear which character is speaking.

Many of Smith's regular readers love her for her style. I have to say that I tolerate her style, but love her work, instead, for its memorable characters and unusual plotlines, both of which are strong points of this new novel. The story begins at a London dinner table, over which a group of near strangers are becoming better acquainted, when Miles Garth suddenly leaves the table. Only when Miles does not return within a reasonable amount of time, is it determined that he has locked himself inside one of the home's upstairs rooms - a room he will remain inside for hours, that turn into days, and then into weeks. Desperate to rid her home of her newly acquired squatter, the dinner host first searches Miles's address book for someone who can talk him out of the room.

That is how she finds Anna, the first of four narrators through whom we learn more about Miles Garth and how he ended up where he is. Anna, a fortyish woman who met Miles on a high school trip to France, at first barely remembers him but surprises herself by some of the things that come back to her. Mark, who is responsible for having invited Miles to the dinner party, is a gay man in his sixties. May, in her eighties, remembers the kindness shown her by Miles. And, finally, there is Brooke, a precocious little ten-year-old girl who only met Miles at the party but now feels somehow connected to him.

There But For The explores some basic questions, even to the meaning of life, but its main theme involves how differently those who pass through our lives might remember the experience than we remember it - and how little we really understand about ourselves and those with whom, over a lifetime, we share time. The novel's relatively simple plot is deceptive; there is a lot going on here.

There are many interesting characters.

But my favorite is Brooke, a young girl (nine or ten years old).

For she comes up with all kinds of curious ideas, such as, "If something is in the past, can it still in any way be happening now?" She also wants to know what human beings are for. And she wants to know why a boat is a "she." She understands perspective; and the concept of suffering. She also wonders why people write novels.

The story runs on at times -- it's not a novel one can really rush through. I liked it!

"There was once a man who, one night between the main course and the sweet at a dinner party, went upstairs and locked himself in one of the bedrooms of the house of the people who were giving the dinner party." That, in a nutshell, is the central plot of Ali Smith's latest book. But, given the ambition and talent of this Whitbread Award winner and Booker Prize finalist, it probably goes without saying that there's much more to Smith's novel than this bare-bones plot summary would imply.

"Going without saying" is one of the themes of the book, from the title on downwards. It's nearly impossible to hear "There But for The" and not finish the proverb: "grace of God go I." But who, of the half-dozen characters delved in this novel, is the unspoken "I"? Or is it all of them? Or all of us? This theme is also explored inasmuch as we come to know Miles Garth, the man in question, through others' impressions and memories of him rather than through his own words.

Among these are Anna, who met Miles when they were both students while she was on a school trip 30 years before. When Miles's unwilling host (she and her husband dub Miles "Our Unwanted Tenant" and slip the troublesome vegetarian slices of ham under the door: "Beggars can't be choosers," she says) finds Anna's contact info in Miles's wallet, she summons Anna to see if she can help coax Miles out of the bedroom where he's locked himself.

Other characters who move through Miles's life and onto the pages of Smith's novel include Mark, the man who, on a whim, invites his new acquaintance Miles to the ill-fated dinner party in the first place. Mark is constantly accompanied by the rhyming, ribald voice of his dead grandmother, whose snide commentary in verse provides much of the humor in that section. There's also Brooke, the precocious 10-year-old dinner party guest whose delightful questions derail dinner party chitchat and whose musings on everything from Greenwich history to Harry Potter to knock-knock jokes form the heart of the book's final section. And there's May, Miles's elderly relative who constantly has to remind herself that she's still alive and who confuses "the intimate" with "the Internet."

This type of wordplay --- silly on the surface but with an undercurrent of truth or even profundity --- is at the heart of Smith's latest, as it has been in her previous award-winning novels. The dinner party conversation is vigorous and entertaining (on many levels), and the young Brooke, in particular, is fascinated by the flexible, playful and sometimes misleading powers of language. Miles, at one point in Mark's recollection, says, "the thing I particularly like about the word `but,' now that I think about it, is that it always takes you off to the side, and where it takes you is always interesting."

Come to think of it, that sentence could just as easily sum up Ali Smith's writing, which is often oblique, always surprising, and endlessly interesting.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl