Genre Fiction
![Ali Smith - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B000APHM8I.jpg)
There But For The: A Novel
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.
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.
Editorial Reviews
Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize
A Best Book of the Year
The Washington Post
The Boston Globe
"A witty, provocative urban fable. . . . If you enjoy surprising, often comic insights into contemporary life, [Smith is] someone to relish." -The New York Times Book Review
"A beguiling ode to human connection shot through with existential wonder and virtuosic wordplay. If you fell for Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad, you'll appreciate Smith's formal twists and turns-and there's more where There came from." -Time Magazine
"Brilliant. . . . Both funny and moving-it succeeds because of Smith's extraordinary skill with ordinary language." -A.S. Byatt, The Guardian (UK)
"Weird and wonderful. . . . Beautifully elusive. . . . It is really about small stuff like life and death and the meaning of human existence, all told with sharp humor and real insight." -Entertainment Weekly
"A marvel. . . . Exceedingly clever. . . . [It] packs a wallop in part because it engages us to read more actively." -The Washington Post
"Quirky, intricately put together. . . . A book about loss and retention: about what we forget and what we remember, about the people who pass through our lives and what bits of them cling to our consciousness." -Charles McGrath, The New York Times
"Ambitious, rambunctious, and poetic. . . . Contains all the real, solid stuff of a novel. It satisfies, it enlightens, and there's a surge of wonderment and poignancy beneath the narrative that continually springs up." -The Philadelphia Inquirer
"By turns whimsical and subtly wrenching. . . . With her penchant for wordplay on full display, the author of The Accidental switches between the perspectives of four people whose lives have been peripherally touched by her gentle shut-in, a man who, like J.D. Salinger's Seymour Glass, has perhaps too much heart to survive comfortably in a hard world." -NPR, Five 2011 Books that Stick With You
"Sophisticated, playful…exhilarating. . . . Smith blasts a window open in our heads." -The Plain Dealer
"A story quite literally crying out to be heard. . . . It is with this word play, repetition, rhyme, and rhythm that Smith proves herself one of the ‘cleverist'-a British author at the top of her game who combines eccentricity and originality in equal measure. . . . Here we have a novel, and a novelist, delighting in the joy of language itself." -The Daily Beast
"A virtuoso piece of writing, both funny and gripping. . . . Smith is a writer with a rich array of conventional strengths. . . . Her prose responds to the world with loving attentiveness." –The Times Liter...
A Best Book of the Year
The Washington Post
The Boston Globe
"A witty, provocative urban fable. . . . If you enjoy surprising, often comic insights into contemporary life, [Smith is] someone to relish." -The New York Times Book Review
"A beguiling ode to human connection shot through with existential wonder and virtuosic wordplay. If you fell for Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad, you'll appreciate Smith's formal twists and turns-and there's more where There came from." -Time Magazine
"Brilliant. . . . Both funny and moving-it succeeds because of Smith's extraordinary skill with ordinary language." -A.S. Byatt, The Guardian (UK)
"Weird and wonderful. . . . Beautifully elusive. . . . It is really about small stuff like life and death and the meaning of human existence, all told with sharp humor and real insight." -Entertainment Weekly
"A marvel. . . . Exceedingly clever. . . . [It] packs a wallop in part because it engages us to read more actively." -The Washington Post
"Quirky, intricately put together. . . . A book about loss and retention: about what we forget and what we remember, about the people who pass through our lives and what bits of them cling to our consciousness." -Charles McGrath, The New York Times
"Ambitious, rambunctious, and poetic. . . . Contains all the real, solid stuff of a novel. It satisfies, it enlightens, and there's a surge of wonderment and poignancy beneath the narrative that continually springs up." -The Philadelphia Inquirer
"By turns whimsical and subtly wrenching. . . . With her penchant for wordplay on full display, the author of The Accidental switches between the perspectives of four people whose lives have been peripherally touched by her gentle shut-in, a man who, like J.D. Salinger's Seymour Glass, has perhaps too much heart to survive comfortably in a hard world." -NPR, Five 2011 Books that Stick With You
"Sophisticated, playful…exhilarating. . . . Smith blasts a window open in our heads." -The Plain Dealer
"A story quite literally crying out to be heard. . . . It is with this word play, repetition, rhyme, and rhythm that Smith proves herself one of the ‘cleverist'-a British author at the top of her game who combines eccentricity and originality in equal measure. . . . Here we have a novel, and a novelist, delighting in the joy of language itself." -The Daily Beast
"A virtuoso piece of writing, both funny and gripping. . . . Smith is a writer with a rich array of conventional strengths. . . . Her prose responds to the world with loving attentiveness." –The Times Liter...
Readers Top Reviews
Olivia BattleyMaggie
Ali Smith is an enthralling writer. She manages to capture your imagination in every one of her books,
abigail dean
Filled with intriguing characters, wonderful wordplay and a real zest for life. Ali Smith writes great dialogue. The book is witty and well observed. It deals with real ordinary life but from a different angle, making it unpredictable and full of empathy. It's not neat and doesn't tie up all the loose ends, but that's life.
BillEJCH
story of different people and how they fight to keep their self identity in today's society.
Nelda S. Mohr
While it wasn’t my vibe, it did keep my interest because I was fixated on trying to figure out what exactly was going on.
Allan G. Hunter
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.
Short Excerpt Teaser
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.
There was once a woman who had met this man thirty years before, had known him slightly for roughly two weeks in the middle of a summer when they were
both seventeen, and hadn't seen him since, though they'd occasionally, for a few years after, exchanged Christmas cards, that kind of thing.
Right now the woman, whose name was Anna, was standing outside the locked bedroom door behind which the man, whose name was Miles, theoretically was. She had her arm raised and her hand ready to – to what? Tap? Knock discreetly? This beautiful, perfectly done-out, perfectly dulled house would not stand for
noise; every creak was an affront to it, and the woman who owned it, emanating disapproval, was just two feet behind her. But it was her fist she was standing there holding up, like a 1980s cliché of a revolutionary, ready to, well, nothing quiet. Batter. Beat. Pound. Rain blows.
Strange phrase, to rain blows. Somewhere over the rainblow. She didn't remember much about him, but they'd never have been friends in the first place if he wasn't the sort to enjoy a bad pun. Was he, unlike Anna right now, the kind of person who'd know what to say to a shut door if he were standing outside one trying to get someone on the other side to open it? The kind who could turn to that child stretched on her front as far up the staircase as her whole small self would go, the toes of her bare feet on the wood of the downstairs hall floor and her chin in her hands on the fifth step lying there watching, and straight off be making the right kind of joke, what do you call two mushrooms on holiday? Fun guys, straight off be holding forth about things like where a phrase like to rain blows came from in the first place?
The woman standing behind Anna sighed. She somehow made a sigh sound cavernous. After it the silence was even louder. Anna cleared her throat.
Miles, she said to the wood of the door. Are you there?
But the bleat of her voice left her somehow less there herself. Ah, now, see – that's what it took, the good inappropriateness of that child. Half boy, all girl, she'd elbowed herself up off the staircase, run up the stairs and was about to hammer on the door.
Bang bang bang.
Anna felt each thud go through her as if the child were hammering her on the chest.
Come out come out wherever you are, the child yelled.
Nothing happened.
Open sesame, the child yelled.
She had ducked under Anna's arm to knock. She looked up at her from under her arm.
It makes the rock in the side of the mountain open, the child said. They say it in the story, therefore the rock just like opens.
The child put her mouth to the door and spoke again, this time without shouting.
Knock knock, she said. Who's there?
Who's there?
There were several reasons at that particular time in Anna Hardie's life for her wondering what it meant, herself, to be there.
One was her job, which she had just given up, in what she and her colleagues laughingly called Senior Liaison, at what she and her colleagues only half-laughingly called the Centre for Temporary Permanence (or, interchangeably, the Centre for Permanent Temporariness).
Another was that Anna had woken up a couple of weeks ago in the middle of her forties in the middle of the night, from a dream in which she saw her own heart behind its ribcage. It was having great trouble beating because it was heavily crusted over with a caul made of what looked like the stuff we clean out of the corners of our eyes in the mornings when we wake up. She woke up, sat up and put her hand on her heart. Then she got up, went to the...
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.
There was once a woman who had met this man thirty years before, had known him slightly for roughly two weeks in the middle of a summer when they were
both seventeen, and hadn't seen him since, though they'd occasionally, for a few years after, exchanged Christmas cards, that kind of thing.
Right now the woman, whose name was Anna, was standing outside the locked bedroom door behind which the man, whose name was Miles, theoretically was. She had her arm raised and her hand ready to – to what? Tap? Knock discreetly? This beautiful, perfectly done-out, perfectly dulled house would not stand for
noise; every creak was an affront to it, and the woman who owned it, emanating disapproval, was just two feet behind her. But it was her fist she was standing there holding up, like a 1980s cliché of a revolutionary, ready to, well, nothing quiet. Batter. Beat. Pound. Rain blows.
Strange phrase, to rain blows. Somewhere over the rainblow. She didn't remember much about him, but they'd never have been friends in the first place if he wasn't the sort to enjoy a bad pun. Was he, unlike Anna right now, the kind of person who'd know what to say to a shut door if he were standing outside one trying to get someone on the other side to open it? The kind who could turn to that child stretched on her front as far up the staircase as her whole small self would go, the toes of her bare feet on the wood of the downstairs hall floor and her chin in her hands on the fifth step lying there watching, and straight off be making the right kind of joke, what do you call two mushrooms on holiday? Fun guys, straight off be holding forth about things like where a phrase like to rain blows came from in the first place?
The woman standing behind Anna sighed. She somehow made a sigh sound cavernous. After it the silence was even louder. Anna cleared her throat.
Miles, she said to the wood of the door. Are you there?
But the bleat of her voice left her somehow less there herself. Ah, now, see – that's what it took, the good inappropriateness of that child. Half boy, all girl, she'd elbowed herself up off the staircase, run up the stairs and was about to hammer on the door.
Bang bang bang.
Anna felt each thud go through her as if the child were hammering her on the chest.
Come out come out wherever you are, the child yelled.
Nothing happened.
Open sesame, the child yelled.
She had ducked under Anna's arm to knock. She looked up at her from under her arm.
It makes the rock in the side of the mountain open, the child said. They say it in the story, therefore the rock just like opens.
The child put her mouth to the door and spoke again, this time without shouting.
Knock knock, she said. Who's there?
Who's there?
There were several reasons at that particular time in Anna Hardie's life for her wondering what it meant, herself, to be there.
One was her job, which she had just given up, in what she and her colleagues laughingly called Senior Liaison, at what she and her colleagues only half-laughingly called the Centre for Temporary Permanence (or, interchangeably, the Centre for Permanent Temporariness).
Another was that Anna had woken up a couple of weeks ago in the middle of her forties in the middle of the night, from a dream in which she saw her own heart behind its ribcage. It was having great trouble beating because it was heavily crusted over with a caul made of what looked like the stuff we clean out of the corners of our eyes in the mornings when we wake up. She woke up, sat up and put her hand on her heart. Then she got up, went to the...
