The First Person and Other Stories

Short stories

Paperback (28 May 2009)

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Publisher's Synopsis

A form-bending and endlessly inventive collection of short stories - from the Booker Prize-shortlisted, Women's Prize-winning author of How to be both and the critically acclaimed Seasonal quartet

'A glorious collection that celebrates and subverts the short story form' Independent


A middle-aged woman conducts a poignant conversation with her gauche fourteen-year-old self. An innocent supermarket shopper finds in her trolley a foul-mouthed, insulting and beautiful child. Challenging the boundaries between fiction and reality, we see a narrator, 'Ali', as she drinks tea, phones a friend and muses on the relationship between the short story and a nymph.

Innovative, sophisticated and intelligent, The First Person and Other Stories effortlessly appeals to our hearts, heads and funny bones in equal measure. One-of-a-kind Ali Smith and the short story are made for each other.

*****

'Hurrah for Ali Smith . . . A bold and brilliant collection of stories by a writer unafraid to give it to us as it is' The Times

'Gleefully turns the short story inside-out . . . Smith is such a dazzling author that finishing one of her books is always bittersweet' Scotland on Sunday

Book information

ISBN: 9780141038018
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint: Penguin Books
Pub date:
Edition: Short stories
DEWEY: 823.914
DEWEY edition: 22
Language: English
Number of pages: 206
Weight: 160g
Height: 197mm
Width: 129mm
Spine width: 15mm