![]() ![]() It is a celebration of Dickens and Shakespeare and the pop art of Pauline Boty. ![]() I’ve come a long way since reading The Accidental, and now enjoy intertextuality as much as anyone. Smith’s stylistic quirks obviously don’t gel with me. I didn’t love it, and in places it irritated me just as The Accidental had. And because I absolutely now have to read Winter, Autumn had to be read first. She hadn’t yet handed in the manuscript there was still 3 weeks to her deadline, but as she was sure that this opening section was not going to change during the final edit, we were treated to a sneak preview of a prolonged riff on A Christmas Carol angry and passionate, with wow factor in spades. As those you have seen her live will know, she was sparkling, all synapses firing with her intelligence and wit, and, this is where the read of Autumn became a done deal, she read the beginning of Winter. I was short and scathing about The Accidental, and no amount of fulsome praise, Booker shortlistings and other literary awards bestowed in the intervening 11 years has persuaded me to return to Ali Smith. You see, if I don’t like the first book I read of a given author, then I take a lot of persuading to pick up a second. ![]() ![]() “Ali Smith needs a second chance?”, cried a bemused fan when, following her event in Edinburgh, I said that I was prepared to give Autumn a go. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |