Accidental cover A stranger appears at an English family’s summer home, a stranger that everyone in the family thinks belongs to someone else. She is somehow fresh, comforting, magnetic, saying to your face what may be on your mind but hasn’t yet crossed the tongue. This mysterious stranger, the “Accidental” title character, changes the family’s world: by playing with the girl, sleeping with the boy, not sleeping with step-da and insulting the mother.

This well-written book plays with words in the minds of all four characters. I know, I know. I just went off recently (The Emperor’s Children) about the ways fiction using multiple narrators annoys the hell out of me. But in this case, each character speaks only from within their own thoughts and experiences — which intersect, interact and collide with each other’s realities along the way. Many writers resort to multi-POV stories because they cannot subtley convey a plot twist, piece of exposition or meaning from one limited set of eyes, using the technique to tell a story. Instead, Smith uses her characters to show the story to readers. Each narrator’s story is somewhat complete in itself, yet the weaving together of experiences allows the reader to discover the whole truth of the novel for themselves.
Truly this book, a finalist for the Booker Prize, is skillful, witty, deeply felt and beautifully rendered.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars – A hardcover book club selection