The First Person and Other Stories effortlessly appeals to our hearts, our heads and our funny bones. Always intellectually playful, but also very moving and very funny, Smith explores the ways, and the whys, of storytelling. In one, a middle-aged woman conducts a poignant conversation with her gauche fourteen-year old self. In another, an innocent supermarket shopper finds in her trolley a foul-mouthed, insulting and beautiful child. Challenging the boundaries between fiction and reality, a third presents its narrator, “Ali” as she drinks tea, phones a friend and muses on the relationship between the short story and - a nymph.
Innovative, sophisticated and intelligent, the stories in The First Person and Other Stories are packed full of ideas, jokes, nuance and compassion. Ali Smith and the short story are made for each other.
Praise For Ali Smith
“Ali Smith is a true original.” — Joyce Carol Oates
“Ali Smith has got style, ideas, and punch. Read her.” —Jeanette Winterson
“In prose marked by harmonious opposites, she’s childlike and wise, exuberant and subtle, humorously intelligent and provocatively dry.” —The Globe and Mail
We at Hamish Hamilton Canada have our favourite sentences from each of our carefully selected books, but we wanted to know which sentences are special to the authors who wrote them.
Here in her own handwriting is one of Ali Smith’s favourites.
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