The Experimentalist

Ali Smith's novels scramble plotlines, upend characters, and flout chronologywhile telling propulsively readable stories.

- Adam Begley

On a late summer's day in Cambridge, England, the writer Ali Smith sat with me on a wooden bench in a patch of garden across from the brick rowhouse where she works. Her new novel, Gliff, was due out before long; she described it as a "dystopian pony book," clearly pleased to have invented a new genre. She flashed impatience when I suggested that she frequently expresses political views both in her fiction and outside it. After a tart "Do I?" she continued, "I think I'm always in the realm of fiction." A pause before she allowed, "Well, I'm a citizen." At that moment, I knocked over the water glass I'd carelessly balanced on one arm of the bench. It shattered, and Smith said merrily, "See what happens when you talk politics?" I apologized, and she told me, "If you want to break another one, I'll break one with you." Funny, cheerfully provocative, at once friendly and sharp-elbowed: That's Smith in person, and also in her copious fictional output (13 novels and six story collections over the past 30 years). Her books are challenging experimental and unabashedly literary-yet welcoming to all, eminently readable even when they're disorienting; they engage the reader, demanding collaboration. (Her fifth novel, published in 2011, has a fill-in-the-blank title: There but for the.) Most writers with a foot in the avant-garde achieve cult status at best; Smith collects awed reviews at home and abroad, wins prizes and honors, and sells lots and lots of books to avid fans.