There But For The

Starred review from July 25, 2011
This startling lark from Smith (The Accidental) is so much more than the sum of its parts. Both breezy and devastating, the novel radiates from a whimsical center: Miles Garth, a dinner party guest, decides to leave the world behind and lock himself in his hostess's spare room, refusing to come out and communicating only by note. Four charmers with only tenuous links to Miles, nicknamed Milo by the growing crowd camped outside the suburban Greenwich, London house, narrate the proceedings: Anna, a girl who knew Miles briefly in the past; Mark, a melancholy gay man who Miles met watching Shakespeare at the Old Vic; May Young, an elderly woman who Miles helped grieve her daughter's death; and the wonderful, "preternaturally articulate" Brooke, arguably the cleverest 10-year-old in contemporary literature. Together they create a portrait not so much of Milesâbecause none of them really knows himâbut of the zeitgeist of their society. In a lovely departure, and in spite of the fact that there is not one ordinary, carefree character in this whole tale, all parents are literate, loving, and tolerant: though Mark is exhausted and sad, his famous mum speaks to him, in verse no less, from beyond the grave; though May is trapped by dementia, she was a kind mother to her ill-fated daughter; and though Brooke is clearly plagued by attention deficit disorder and is misunderstood and disliked at school, her parents love her dearly. This fine, unusual novel is sweet and melancholy, indulgent of language and of the fragile oddballs who so relish in it.

January 30, 2012
In the middle of an English dinner party, Miles Garth excuses himself from the table, locks himself in the guest room, and refuses to leave. As the weeks and then months drag on, hostess Gen—portrayed by narrator Anne Flosnik as an afflicted damsel in distress—goes through Miles’s address book to enlist friends, however remote, to coax the unwanted boarder out of his lair. The first rescue attempt is made by Anna—who met Miles decades earlier on a school trip—whom Flosnik deftly renders as a classy and good-natured Glaswegian, perplexed that Miles even remembered her. After Anna, Flosnik’s performance declines: Mark—who met Miles in a theater—sounds much like the audio’s other men, while the voice given to Brooke, the 10-year-old who makes a final attempt at extricating Miles, is too similar to those of the book’s other children—all of them bright and high-pitched. Flosnik’s narration is, however, well paced and entertaining, and this—coupled with Smith’s playful language, rhymes, songs, and imaginative plot—will enchant listeners. A Pantheon hardcover.