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Outstanding
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Atlantic Monthly Joseph O'Neill
An enormous technical accomplishment that reminds us of the difference between linguistic hocus-pocus and real writing.
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Outstanding
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Boston Globe Gail Caldwell
The novel is small and glistening, one confident little shooting star instead of a cumbersome light show.
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Outstanding
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Daily Telegraph Alex Clark
It seems, on occasion, to promise more, and something of a different order and magnitude, than a novel ought to. Can there be much higher praise than that?
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Outstanding
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Daily Telegraph Katie Owen
Mordantly observant, pitch-perfect in her evocation of the speech and thought-patterns of her characters.
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Outstanding
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New York Observer Adam Begley
A delightful book, a satire that's playful but not cuddly, tart but not bitter, thoughtful but not heavy. [16 Jan 2006, p. 16]
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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly
So sure-handed are Smith's overlapping descriptions of the same events from different viewpoints that her simple, disquieting story lifts into brilliance.
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Outstanding
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San Francisco Chronicle Michael Schaub
The last sentence of the book manages to be enlightening, confusing and almost destructive in its simple power.
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Outstanding
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The Independent Paul Bailey
To read The Accidental is to be excited from first to last. Smith has produced a page-turner for the sophisticated and literate as well as adherents of the "jolly good story".
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Outstanding
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TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Sophie Ratcliffe
Original, restless, formally and morally challenging, [Smith] remains a writer who resists definition.
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Outstanding
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Washington Post Jeff Turrentine
Smith is a dazzling talent, fearlessly lassoing different styles and ideas and playfully manipulating them.
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Favorable
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Village Voice Jessica Winter,
Like the musical notation with which the novel shares a name, the Bunuelian absurdity at the heart of The Accidental lifts the tale a step sharp from domestic realism.
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Favorable
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The Onion A.V. Club Noel Murray
Though The Accidental is more spectacularly messy than brilliant, it has a strong perspective on what it means to be alive in the early '00s, and constantly tugged at by the disturbingly similar feelings of guilt and self-righteousness.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Michiko Kakutani
Dynamic if flawed.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Book Review Laura Miller
Smith is a wizard at observing and memorializing the ebb and flow of the everyday mind
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Favorable
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The New Yorker
Smithâs well-honed, even obsessive prose gives a feeling of eavesdropping on her charactersâ innermost thoughts.
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Favorable
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Caroline Adderson
It's not perfect, but the relationships here are deeper precisely because they are not accidental. [9 Jul 2005]
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Favorable
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The Guardian Steven Poole
The Accidental has an infectious sense of fun and invention. The story goes through some surprising reversals and arrives at a satisfying conclusion, which is also a beginning.
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Favorable
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Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese
While The Accidental doesn't add up to much more than a clever stunt, Smith pulls it off with terrific pizzazz.
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
Dazzling wordplay and abundant imagination invigorate a tale of lives interrupted.
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Favorable
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London Review Of Books Eleanor Birne
Things do not progress neatly; they circle and return. But the writing is fresh and unexpected each time.
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Favorable
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Christian Science Monitor Yvonne Zipp
The writing brims with wit, humor, and energy.
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Favorable
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Booklist Allison Block
Smith renders acrobatic prose that seems in a perpetual state of acceleration. [1 Dec 2005, p. 27]
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Mixed
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Los Angeles Times Richard Eder
Like an elaborately faceted lens, Smith's writing aims to magnify her story and its characters. Instead, angled as it is, it distends its creator. [29 Jan 2006]
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Mixed
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Bookslut Eoin Cunningham
The Accidental ends up more an exercise in cleverness than a story. Equally, the reader’s enjoyment of The Accidental will be inextricably linked to their appetite for such an exercise. If you aren’t swept away by Smith’s undoubted way with words, and you rely on the bones of the story itself, you will be disappointed.
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