"There was a man dwelt by a churchyard.
Well, no, okay, it wasn't always a man; in this particular case it was a woman. There was a woman dwelt by a churchyard.
Though, to be honest, nobody really uses that word nowadays. Everybody says cemetery. And nobody says dwelt any more. In other words:
There was once a woman who lived by a cemetery. Every morning when she woke up she looked out of her back window and saw -
Actually, no. There was once a woman who lived by - no, in - a second-hand bookshop. She lived in the flat on the first floor and ran the shop which took up the whole of downstairs.There she sat, day after day, among the skulls and the bones of second-hand books, the stacks and shelves of them spanning the lengths and breadths of the long and narrow rooms, the piles of them swaying up, precarious like rootless towers, towards the cracked plaster of the ceiling."
From The Whole Story and other stories, the short story "the universal story" by Ali Smith
Ali Smith (*1962)
Another featured author at the EdBookFest in 2011. Unfortunately, Ali Smith read at the festival while I was checking in at Schiphol. So, I missed her voice. After having read her short story collection "The Whole Story and other stories", I am even more aware of what I've missed. Her very original voice, her wittiness of breaking with literary conventions, jumping from one first-person narrator to another and leaving it undefined whether it is a female or male narrator. She is constantly triggering the reader to sort out the storyline and get the right point of view, not taking one along a well-trodden path. Additionally, she plays with conventions and breaks with everyday concepts. Like, say, falling in love with a tree as in the short story "may"?
"I tell you. I fell in love with a tree. I couldn't not. It was in blossom."
Reason enough, sure, but, hey, a tree? And be assured, it is not a bird or squirrel talking....So another witty Scottish author, Ali Smith was born in Inverness, Scotland, UK. According to wikipedia, Smith was born to "working-class parents" and "raised in a council house" (mind you!). She studied at the University of Aberdeen and went to Newnham College at Cambridge to never finish her PhD. While working as a lecturer at the University of Strathclyde she fell ill with the myalgic encephalomyelitis syndrom, or more commonly named, the chronic fatigue syndrom. She now lives with her partner Sarah Wood in Cambridge and is a full-time writer besides of writing for various newspapers as The Guardian, The Scotsman and the Times Literary Supplement. Her brilliant talent lies in exploring the everyday for unexpected beauty and at the same time picturing the comedy in it while capturing bizarre psychological territories. Her canny style won her already various prizes, several of her short stories were shortlisted and the critics are full of praise. Certainly a modern writer you shouldn't miss.
"I tell you. I fell in love with a tree. I couldn't not. It was in blossom."
Reason enough, sure, but, hey, a tree? And be assured, it is not a bird or squirrel talking....So another witty Scottish author, Ali Smith was born in Inverness, Scotland, UK. According to wikipedia, Smith was born to "working-class parents" and "raised in a council house" (mind you!). She studied at the University of Aberdeen and went to Newnham College at Cambridge to never finish her PhD. While working as a lecturer at the University of Strathclyde she fell ill with the myalgic encephalomyelitis syndrom, or more commonly named, the chronic fatigue syndrom. She now lives with her partner Sarah Wood in Cambridge and is a full-time writer besides of writing for various newspapers as The Guardian, The Scotsman and the Times Literary Supplement. Her brilliant talent lies in exploring the everyday for unexpected beauty and at the same time picturing the comedy in it while capturing bizarre psychological territories. Her canny style won her already various prizes, several of her short stories were shortlisted and the critics are full of praise. Certainly a modern writer you shouldn't miss.
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