the one I really wanted to include was The Accidental which I don't have a copy of but funnily enough was the first book I read by her which I absolutely adored
The Accidental (2005)
The Accidental is a 2005 novel by Scottish author Ali Smith. It follows a middle-class English family who are visited by an uninvited guest, Amber, while they are on holiday in a small village in Norfolk. Amber's arrival has a profound effect on all the family members. Eventually she is cast out the house by the mother, Eve. But the consequences of her appearance continue even after the family has returned home to London. The novel was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, the Man Booker Prize and James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and it won the Whitbread Award.
- ISBN:
- 9780241989111
- Length:
- 306 pages
Genres: literary fiction
Lists: …
Similar books
Winter
Ali Smith
2017 · 336 pages · 3 reviews
Others: MixedWhen four people, strangers and family, converge on a fifteen-bedroom house in Cornwall for Christmas, will there be enough room for everyone?
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also literary fiction78%Lauren Wade loved both13%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations9%Stone Yard Devotional
Charlotte Wood
2023 · 320 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveShortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, a novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be good, from the award-winning author of The Weekend. Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She doesn't believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident. But disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past. Meditative, moving, and finely observed, Stone Yard Devotional is a seminal novel from a writer of rare power, exploring what it means to retreat from the world, the true nature of forgiveness, and the sustained effect of grief on the human soul.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also literary fiction82%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations18%Such a Fun Age
Kiley Reid
2019 · 320 pages · 8 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveA striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both. Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right. But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix's desire to help. At twenty-five, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other. With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone family, and the complicated reality of being a grown up. It is a searing debut for our times.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also literary fiction83%Lauren Wade loved both14%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations3%Spool of Blue Thread
Anne Tyler
2015 · 376 pages · 3 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positive"From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author--now in the fiftieth year of her remarkable career--a brilliantly observed, joyful and wrenching, funny and true new novel that reveals, as only she can, the very nature of a family's life. "It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon." This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The whole family--their two daughters and two sons, their grandchildren, even their faithful old dog--is on the porch, listening contentedly as Abby tells the tale they have heard so many times before. And yet this gathering is different too: Abby and Red are growing older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them, and the fate of the house so lovingly built by Red's father. Brimming with the luminous insight, humor, and compassion that are Anne Tyler's hallmarks, this capacious novel takes us across three generations of the Whitshanks, their shared stories and long-held secrets, all the unguarded and richly lived moments that combine to define who and what they are as a family"--
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also literary fiction83%Lauren Wade loved both14%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations3%The Heart
Maylis de Kerangal
2014 · 238 pages · 2 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveA twenty-four-hour whirlwind of death and life. This is the heart of Simon Limbeau. This is the black box of his twenty-year-old body, circulating five litres of blood each minute, compressing itself a hundred thousand times each day. No bigger than a fist, yet it is capable of pumping blood through sixty thousand miles of blood vessels. This heart has leaped, swelled, melted, sunk, and now, on this glacial winter night, it rests and recharges, readying itself for the day ahead. 5.50 a.m. This is his heart. And here is its story.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also literary fiction84%Lauren Wade loved both14%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations2%Queenie
Candice Carty-Williams
2019 · 396 pages · 7 reviews
Others: Mostly positiveQueenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she's constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places . . . including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth. As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, 'What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?' -- all of the questions today's woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also literary fiction84%Lauren Wade loved both14%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations2%





