by Ali Smith
First published 2003
In Ali Smith's kaleidoscopic collection, reality bends and twists through impossible encounters. Ordinary moments fracture into surreal landscapes where Death carries a cell phone, lovers romance trees, and pursuit becomes performance art. Each story operates like a quantum experiment: what happens when logic dissolves and imagination takes control? Characters navigate bizarre circumstances with startling calm—a woman chased by bagpipers, an artist constructing impossible vessels from secondhand novels. Smith transforms the mundane into electric possibility, revealing how thin the membrane is between everyday experience and absolute strangeness. These are not just stories, but portals into alternate logics where emotion trumps reason and the impossible feels breathtakingly immediate.
Genres: short-stories, literary-fiction, contemporary, magical-realism
Vibes: intimate, thought-provoking, whimsical
Tropes: experimental-fiction, magical-realism
Setting: Scotland
192 pages · Paperback · Hamish Hamilton