Artful

Starred review from October 22, 2012
This contemplative, electrifying, and transformative book comes in four sections, originally delivered as lectures on comparative literature at St. Anne’s College, Oxford. Readers, however, won’t find themselves on the other side of the lectern. Instead, Smith (There but for the), writing in the first person but not necessarily as Ali Smith, opens with grief: the I-persona has recently lost her longtime love and, still in the throes of despair a year later, turns to the papers and research left on her beloved’s desk, ostensibly for a series of talks on literature—the substance of which becomes much of Smith’s actual lectures. Through riveting reflections on the limitations and the limitlessness of stories, Smith considers four aspects of the endeavor of creation: on “time,” “form,” “edge,” and “offer and reflection.” Yet what Smith also provides is the I-persona’s own journey, through her anguish, through her responses to her beloved’s notes and ideas (which the reader also reads) and through some “real” life (visits with a therapist, some mentions of work, etc.). The results are redemptive for everyone, testifying with singular clarity and wit to the immutable necessity for art.

November 1, 2013

Toward the beginning of the first of the four lectures that make up Smith's new book, she quotes Matthew Reynolds on Sappho, saying, "The longing in the fragments was doubled by a longing felt by readers for the fragments themselves to be made whole," adding, "It is the act of making it up, from the combination of what we've got and what we haven't, that makes the human, makes the art...." Fitting then, that Smith's book is made up of four unfinished literary lectures. Everyone from Michelangelo to Beyonce is referenced, as our narrator wanders through days and thoughts in a dense collage of words, haunted by the lover who is gone. There is grief here but also a joyful spirit at work in the form of wordplay and appreciation for the transformative power of art. Smith reads the audio version, and while American readers may at first be challenged by her quick speech and Scottish accent, there is a moving intimacy to her narration. VERDICT Readers of serious literature and poetry will find this a rich, worthy listen.--Heather Malcolm, Bow, WA

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