Hello Gentle Reader
There are people, in all our lives – perhaps to be more specific: there are people, in all our childhoods that touch us. They are usually older – we look up to them. They appear to be from a different world; they usually are. Yet there is still something about them. Something different. Something that just cannot be quite pinned or pointed out in any specific matter. Though through the years, they have become little faded photographs. Around the edges are a bit discoloured – like someone was dipping them in tea or coffee, like it were a biscuit. The faces, have faded – they have deteriorated slightly into the obscure world of pixilation; causing the photo to become grainy and old. This is what memory is like the father you go back, thinking about such things. However the emotions are just as raw and still feel real. Whoever it was – it was a friend’s older brother or a friend; when I was learning to roller skate, there was a bit of a hill that slowly curved and I was having issues turning with the slow curving and narrowing sidewalk and the brother quickly skated up and allowed me to fall into him as we were falling – I’ll never forget that odd feeling of trepidation and awkward relief at being caught. Reading the last few pages of Ali Smith’s latest novel “There but for the,” had let loose those feelings, and those memories, all simmered to the surface again as Brooke and Miles Garth, talked. The way they talked at ease with each other. The wonderful cleverness they had enjoyed each other’s company was just something that reminded me of those odd moments.
Ali Smith’s new novel had caused quite the controversy. Its snub from the Booker Prize of two-thousand and eleven, for not making it even on the long list, was an outrage! This novel became the Booker Prize of two-thousand and eleven’s worst nightmare, for it was constantly brought up in the crisis of the debate of “readability over quality.” It was named one of the best books of two thousand and eleven along with Alan Hollinghurst’s new novel “The Strangers Child.” Even I named it one of the best books of two-thousand and eleven – not that my opinion means anything.
It is a playful novel; which usually sounds like in my head, a rather boring or self-centered novel that is being overly complicated, or ridiculous. However Ali Smith’s new novel is quite the contrary to the stereotypical playful novel. Even though the summary or the blurb about this book would give one the impression that it is otherwise following that stereotypical pattern, of a playful self-centered novel. When first reading about this book – which would have most likely never come under my radar, if it was not for the Booker Prize snub; I thought to myself when reading the blurb about a man who decides to lock himself into a guest bedroom after a dinner party, and decides not to leave, was a rather strange book – and yet continuing to read the blurb it gets even stranger. The person whose guest bedroom he has commandeered, starts selling merchandise, about the man who has locked himself in her guest bedroom. Immediately I thought to myself, it was no wonder the Booker Prize had snubbed this book.
From that point on, I did not bother to give the book another thought. With the Christmas season, around the, the store was busy. Yet traversing the aisles, I immediately was struck by a book, which had gone unnoticed before. It was white, with the look of green grid paper on the cover. In the middle of the green grid paper, was a outlined door in pen. Complete with the design of the door itself. The rest of the book was white. Accept for the authors name on top in black bold letters, and the bottom in a pea soup green colour was the title “There but for the,” looking up at the top showed the author “Ali Smith.” It was the cover that grabbed me. This odd picture of a door, on green graph paper – it was lovely shade of green as well, reminiscent of a hospital room coloured green – except it look nicer on the book. It was not under any sign stating “Best books of 2011,” nor was it on a table that had a sign stating any new releases. No sticker on it stating that it was a Booker Prize snub. Nothing, just a book, like every other book, sitting on a shelf with to no importance at all. I ignored the book again. I really did not care for a book that was playful.
Time went on, and on. I passed the book every so often. I picked it up. Flipped through it. Eventually I decided to buy it. With a store employee discount as well as a store credit and the fact was that I only ended up paying a dollar and fifty nine cents for the book, what harm could it do. Besides the fact that I had also made it one of the best books of two thousand and eleven and it was deserving to have been read and reviewed.
First reading of the novels were odd. The sentences did not seem to fit quite right. Some of the sentences had a coma at the end of the sentence with an odd word at the end of them. Not odd as in peculiar word, that would certainly stand out in the sentence because of its meaning. No just generic words that could fit in any sentence. Such sentences were odd to me. The way that the word ‘that,’ had appeared at the end of a sentence with a coma in front of it, kept pulling the metaphorical chain around my neck. Causing great annoyance. However I got over these little pot holes in the road of this novel, and tried not to think of them that much when they decided to appear.
One of the largest shocks of this book was how it works. The premise of a man, who locks himself in a room, in a stranger’s house, during a dinner part, and a cult of celebrity that surrounds these entire abnormal events, is just odd. Yet it works. It works for its purpose. The thought of reading this book at first was: “Really we are so culturally and creatively stagnant and sterile, that we have to right about some ‘reality,’ celebrity?” However it’s not quite like that. Of course the premise of this book would let you believe that, but no it is quite the opposite indeed. The act of Miles Garth, locking himself in the Mister and Misses Lee’s guest bedroom, connects four people – well three people anyway; from their own distracted and broken lives.
There first of these people is a Scottish woman by the name of Anna. She won a writing contest, among other people from all over the United Kingdom, and has gone a Europe wide trip. There as a young seventeen-year old she meets the then seventeen year old Miles. Anna felt alienated and isolated from the group on the trip as well. Though upon meeting Miles things start to change. They continued to send each other little notes and postcards even after the trip. It is purely by coincidence that Anna is discovered by the Miss Lee, who finds her name in Miles cell phone which he left down stairs a long with and in his jacket; he wore at the dinner party. It is from that point on that Anna remembers that fateful summer and she remembers the enigmatic man behind the door.
There is Mark Palmer, an elderly gay man, who first meets Miles, and is the one that brought him to the dinner party that he did not want to attend. His dead mother Faye Palmer lives inside of his head – and often likes to tell clever little rhymes.
There is May Young, a senior woman who is dethatched from the world around her that she refuses to speak. Yet her connection to Miles is the oddest and perhaps the least enjoyable of this book, is that Miles comes and reads to her.
Then there is perhaps one of the more interesting characters of this entire book at the end. Brook, a nine and soon ten year old little girl, who was at the dinner party – though not quite expected to be there; and witnesses the following outcome of the twisting bizarre tale of Mister Miles Garth, and his celebrity as Milo; and her keep delivering notes underneath the door way for Miles Garth to read, while he sits in the guest bedroom, doing nothing at all that interesting – so she makes it her job to make sure that he reads something interesting.
In all Ali Smith created an interesting piece of work, which does not probe the psychology of Miles as I had first thought it would, but instead searches the people that are connected to him, and how his actions have the ripple effect and cause slight disturbances of waves and memories, in the general lives of others.
Ali Smith also uses language in this story. Which has always been something odd to me, when people discuss language in writing. All writing has the use of language. This has always baffled me. What on earth were people talking about when they were saying that the language of a book is interesting? Ali Smith’s book, for example is written in the English Language. For me that is it that is all. But it is how she uses the language that makes it slightly interesting. Such as the following excerpt near the end:
“Brooke looked up from her piece of paper and watched them throwing the words for birds and flowers and Hollywood actors at each other like they were throwing little rocks wrapped as presents.”
There many occasions of writing like that though. I still remember the discussion at the dinner party about ‘google,’ itself:
“Google is so strange. It promises everything, but everything isn’t there. You type in the words for what you need, and what you need becomes superfluous in an instant, shadowed instantaneously by the things you really need, and none of them answerable by Google. . . Sure, there’s a certain charm to being able to look up and watch Eartha Kitt singing Old Fashioned Millionaire in 1957 at three in the morning or Hayley Mills singing a song about femininity from an old Disney film. but the charm is a kind of deception about a whole new way of feeling lonely, a semblance of plenitude but really a new level of Dante’s inferno, a zombie-filled cemetery of spurious clues, beauty, pathos, pain . . . More and more, the pressing human dilemma: how to walk a clean path between obscenities.”
It’s a strange novel as well. But it is interesting novel it how it is written. Not necessarily overtly clever or too playful – but enough to be unique in its own right.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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As well as a welcome and hello to another follower to the blog The Black Cat!
