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The Accidental is not an easy read, despite what everyone else says. To follow it, one needs to transcend the traditional style of 'he said, she said' and descend into the minds of the characters. Despite the perception of choppiness, at a higher level the writing is connected and it follows the logical progression of human thought (if we can give human thought progressive properties).
The story takes place over the course of several months and explores the relationships of four member family with a fifth character that 'accidentally' joins them at their vacation home. As each of the four adapts to this new character, the author dives deeper into constructing their emotional and mental states , the perceptions behind their past and present experiences and the result is a very challenging, yet utterly satisfying read.
You'll need patience, humility and open mind to absorb this novel, but in the end, you'll feel like you've accomplished something grand. And it will feel good.
I promise.
If you like this book, try Jane Austin's 'A Room Of One's Own'.
by Simon Cleveland
Rated by buyers 
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There are some beautiful moments in this, but to me they were very very very scarce. The whole book just make Smith seem like she's trying too hard to be poetic and write "beautifully" but writing beautifully isn't always successful, and even if it is, sometimes it's just not what you want in the context. Sometimes her strange formatting choices seem completely unnecessary other than just to further accentuate the characters quirkiness, which, trust me, she accentuates enough.
I felt like I just kept reading and reading expecting something better to happen (it didn't). When the characters were introduced, I had hope. I liked the kids, hated the adults, but was pretty sure I was supposed to (I *was* supposed to hate the adults, right? Please tell me she didn't expect people to like them...). But the meandering story seemed to lose any semblance of a plot, and characters' revelations (as well as resolutions, for that matter), were vague. Just as much, her characters became so unbelievable that it irked me. (And yes, I know that it's fiction, but unbelievable characters, if utilized, need a story with better execution than this one to be able to hold them up).
In any case, if you want it summed up nice and clean and easy for you: The Accidental is just plain boring.
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A family on holiday in a rural county northeast of London is so self-absorbed that they don't realize that they've let a complete stranger into their home. This is the premise of Ali Smith's 2005 novel, The Accidental. The very first chapter begins in the very first person voice of Amber MacDonald, the stranger; she is the only very first person voice in the story. Each of the three sections of the book allows the voice of Amber and each of the four people in the family a stream-of-consciousness narration of their thoughts during a stretch of time. The family: Astrid Smart, the twelve year-old daughter who strives to record all of her life on a camcorder; Magnus Smart, the seventeen year-old son haunted by the suicide of a classmate; Eve Smart, the mother and egotistical author of bad fiction; and Dr. Michael Smart, the step-father and philandering professor; relate their lives in a polyglossic net of third person, present tense episodes. The book moves through time completely within the thoughts of these characters; a modern use of language and structure elements creates a striking, vivid picture of each of their personal crises.
At very first look, the characters seem flat, almost stock characters, floating around, too self-centered to notice each other. Astrid's prepubescent musings are whimsical but hardly philosophical; Magnus's depressive, obsessive repetitions are tiresome. Enter Amber. Almost immediately, she saves Magnus from bathroom suicide, becomes the singular obsession of Michael, and gains the trust of Astrid. Amber is the center of conflict in the novel, and the catalyst for the change of each of the family members. While she drives the conflict, however, it would be difficult to say that she is the book's main character--each of the characters brings their own unraveling story to the book, and amazingly, Smith does justice to each of them. Michael, the cliché of the philandering professor, even seems to become self-aware--losing his egoism in the realization that his life is a stereotype. In the only break from stream-of-consciousness style writing in the text, this realization is related in sonnet, free verse, aabb and abab poetry form in the words of Michael.
Because the narration is almost exclusively the stream-of-consciousness presentation of the thoughts of each individual character, the narration does little for exposition beyond what is apparent to the characters. When the characters return home from their vacation at the end of the novel, their house has been stripped entirely empty of everything except the answering machine. It is never discovered what actually transpired to cause this, but Eve suspects that it is Amber's doing. This and other intentional ambiguities add to the mystery of the novel. As epiphanies are reached and characters change their perspectives, the reader must choose which perspective to take on the turn of events, based on the different realities of each of the characters.
One of my favorite elements of the text is the relation of current events to the lives of the characters. At one point, toward the end of the book, Eve is reflecting on some disturbing images recently released from Abu Gharib prison in Baghdad. The picture is a familiar one to the minds of most contemporary Americans, and the description of her reflection on the pictures is probably similar to a fairly recent experience many readers have had. It remains to be told whether this will simply make the book seem outdated in later years, but having snippets of what is still a current situation throughout the text creates a solid sense of a modern setting.
Conventions of devices and structure exist to promote unity and harmony in a text. The Accidental lacks the conventions of dialogue, capitalization, sentence structure, character structure (antagonist vs. protagonist), exposition, punctuation, and use of a single narrator. All these things aside, however, the book still exists as a unified text. The ending of the book is (without being a spoiler) very satisfactory, the text seems harmonized and even one further--believable. There is very little extraneous material, sans one piece: the very first person musings of Amber. Amber seems to ramble about little connected with the action of the novel, and her very first person narration is completely false. Amber claims to be everything she isn't, and gives absolutely no insight into her character. This is not to say that the book would be any better if the reader knew what Amber was thinking; in fact, it would definitely detract from the intended ambiguity and mystery of the text. However, her parts were rambling, nonsensical, and the author might have done us one better by simply leaving them out. Fortunately, Amber's input is short and the development of the other characters makes up for her extraneous babble.
The unconventional style of Smith's novel is quite successful in telling the story of a pivotal year in the life of the Smart family. The modern structure creates ease of understanding of the characters and their surroundings, and allows the author, in a relatively short text, to relate not one, but four complete stories.
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More of a technically impressive book than an enjoyable one. The characters are with quirks that are fun to write -- the hyperintellectual daughter always using "i.e" in her monologues, the son experiencing the world as a math equation -- but that make them feel more like vessels for glitzy prose than actual individuals. The story is weighed down by the writing, and I found myself scanning whole pages to get to the subsequent graf where something, anything, would actually happen.
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i loved this novel of a mysterious woman who arrives at the vacation house of a british academic family and with ingenuity and bravery challenges and heals the broken life of each of her dysfunctional hosts. the book is loosely based on the pier paolo pasolini's 1968 film "teorama"; but where pasolini is allegoric, over-stated, almost exploitative in his sexuality, smith seems to have learned complexity and subtlety from the 4 decades since pasolini filmed. she is phenomenological, heartfelt, caring. less sex and more eros. whereas pasolini alludes to jesus, smith paints a samurai vision of taking charge of one's life and acting to help those around you. i am reminded of "ghost dog" and "zatoichi."