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A Primeira Pessoa E Outra Histórias (2011)

by Ali Smith(Favorite Author)

3.61 of 5 Votes: 1

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Quetzal

review 1: The problem with short story collections is that they can be so hit and miss, and that is definitely true here. I was indifferent to many of Smith's pieces, and some (True Short Story and The Child, for example) erred too far on that side of that overly knowing, smug cleverness of many modern literary short stories. I don't want to read something that smacks me over the head with just how damn literary it is; I want to read something good.Fortunately, there is some good stuff here. I particularly enjoyed Writ, a meeting between the narrator and her fourteen-year-old self, as she struggles to offer advice - then wonders if she should. And the final work, The First Person, is really rather good indeed. A new couple consider whether or not they have a future, given a large ag... moree-gap and a general "once bitten" air of reluctance. The prose here is quite lovely:"You're not the first person who ever made me feel like this, you know, I say.I'm the first person today, though, you say."I was frustrated on the whole because the good stories here are very good, but there was a lot to be indifferent about. Still, I may read more of Smith's work in the future.
review 2: I love Ali Smith's stories. They are inventive, fun, generous, open, insightful, thought-provoking ... I could go on and on. I'd read three of these online before, and they were a pleasure to read again. The first five stories of the collection are very strong (so are a couple of the later ones) and my favorite has to be "Fidelio and Bess," a story that interweaves the story of a present-day couple with the story in Beethoven's only opera and the story in the Gershwin opera to great effect; I thought about it for days. Even the stories that are not as strong as the others had lovely endings and AS's trademark way of looking at 'old' things with a new, fresh outlook. (See the ending of the last story, "The first person," as an example of this.)A quote from the last story characterizes much of AS for me: "It [a TV story:] had sacrificed its girl character to a horrible end for the sake of a neat story; I had been arguing with the neatness and foulness and cynicism of it in my head all night. I had woken up still trying to think of alternative endings for the girl in the story, still granting her character a more open road, a kinder shape of things.' less

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