Smith, Ali (1962-…), is a Scottish-born novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. She has gained international recognition for her powerful and unconventional storytelling style. Her prize-winning fiction is at once ingenious and startling. For example, in a volume of stories entitled The First Person (2008), one of the stories is called “The Second Person.” For Smith these “persons” serve as both characters and voices (points of view).
Smith’s short fiction often explores complex moments in time. Her novels tend to be about time in the larger sense of memories, seasons, and cycles. In her longer fiction, she also touches upon themes related to oppressive elements in middle-class culture. These themes may include narrow-mindedness, sexual discrimination, and seeing the value of art and culture only in terms of money. However, her work always remains surprising and playful. She toys with language, shifts the genders of characters, and introduces elements of fantasy. Deep feeling about human relationships, as well as observations about nature, social politics, and art fill her writings.
Smith’s many short stories have been collected in Free Love (1995), Other Stories (1999), The Whole Story (2003), and The First Person. Smith edited The Book Lover (2008, originally published under the title The Reader in 2006). The book is a selection of writings from her favorite authors, such as the French author Colette and the African American novelist Zora Neale Hurston, as well as from other favorite artists, such as the American jazz singer Billie Holiday. Artful (2012) combines literary criticism, essays, and fiction. Smith not only loves books, but also the places where books are kept. She titled one of her story collections Public Library (2016). Smith has also written the plays The Seer (written in 2001 and first performed in 2006) and Just (2005), a satirical drama about the awkward pursuit of justice in a British town.
Smith’s first novel, Like (1998), tells about Amy Shone, her daughter Kate, and Aisling McCarthy, whose passion for Amy disrupts the mother-daughter relationship. Hotel World (2001) is a ghost story about a chambermaid who dies and narrates the story after her death. The chambermaid discusses the characters and comments on themes of time and change, all viewed from the perspective of hotel life. The Accidental (2005) explores the emotional stresses of an upper-class British family visited by a mysterious female guest. The mysterious guest may or may not be the narrator of the four parts of the novel. The plot of this strange fiction touches on adultery, suicide, and school bullying. Girl Meets Boy (2007) is a retelling in modern terms of the story of Iphis (a girl thought to be a boy) from the Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid. In the novel There but for the (2011), Miles Garth leaves a dinner party, locks himself in a spare room without explanation, and refuses to leave. The story is told from four separate points of view.
Smith’s novel How to Be Both (2014) tells two separate stories that weave into a single narrative. One story focuses on a 16-year-old British girl in modern times, and the other tells about the career of an obscure Italian painter of the Renaissance. The layering in the stories may be compared to the layering in the frescoes (paintings on plaster) that were popular at the time of the Renaissance. The stories can be read separately and in either order (two versions of the book exist). Smith’s novel Autumn (2017) was the first of a planned quartet (group of four novels) named for the four seasons. Each book views the personal relationships among its characters against the backdrop of modern social turmoil. Companion Piece (2022) also explores relationships, this time against a backdrop that includes the COVID-19 pandemic (worldwide epidemic) that began in late 2019.
Smith was born on Aug. 24, 1962, in Inverness, Scotland. She attended the University of Aberdeen, earning an M.A. degree in 1984 and an M.Litt. degree in 1985. She began working on a Ph.D. at Cambridge but discontinued her studies to begin writing plays for regional theater and composing short fiction. She was a lecturer in literature at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow from 1990 to 1992, when she became a full-time writer. She was appointed a Commander of the British Empire in 2015.
