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A review by samahcanread__
There But For The by Ali Smith
4.0
the book start with a simple plot; a man, during a dinner party, left his seat, went upstairs, and locked himself in the spare room of his hosts' house. Simple, easy and intreguing. You read the book thinking this is it, I'm gonna follow the whys and the hows, the ripple this action caused, dragging everyone that was on this party into this plot, and seeing how they feel. But halfway through, you realise, that the plot isn't important, I don't care why he locked himself there, why he chose to crash a place and never been seen again.
Ali Smith took the plot, the curiousity, and made it reach its full potential without revealing why it happened. Or maybe she did, I don't know, I wasn't interested in that.
I ate up this book, but not in a way you inhale your favourite food. I took my time, I sampled the entrees, I filled up my senses with the aromas, and ate it slowly, savouring each and every bite.
The writing was lyrical and poetic. There is thing that Ali Smith does in her books (I read two so far, so my Leo ego is telling me I am now an expert), where she plays with words and meaning, focusing on words. Not in a sense of using words to give a sentence the meaning through the context, but to make each word used in her books hold as much value as a full sentence, making words her stronger asset.
There is another thing that enchanted me, and it was the fact that she gave four main pov, from four different people; an old man, a 11 years old child, a dementia affected woman and middle aged man, and you can feel how the words used the style changed to bend to every person's pov of the world. It was like prying open their heads, and taking a quick stroll.
Ali Smith took the plot, the curiousity, and made it reach its full potential without revealing why it happened. Or maybe she did, I don't know, I wasn't interested in that.
I ate up this book, but not in a way you inhale your favourite food. I took my time, I sampled the entrees, I filled up my senses with the aromas, and ate it slowly, savouring each and every bite.
The writing was lyrical and poetic. There is thing that Ali Smith does in her books (I read two so far, so my Leo ego is telling me I am now an expert), where she plays with words and meaning, focusing on words. Not in a sense of using words to give a sentence the meaning through the context, but to make each word used in her books hold as much value as a full sentence, making words her stronger asset.
There is another thing that enchanted me, and it was the fact that she gave four main pov, from four different people; an old man, a 11 years old child, a dementia affected woman and middle aged man, and you can feel how the words used the style changed to bend to every person's pov of the world. It was like prying open their heads, and taking a quick stroll.