helen sandler | journalismAli Smith
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The Accidental Florist As her new novel hits the shops, Ali Smith tells DIVA about literature, lies and her betrayal by the Guardian In dark jeans and an aviator jacket, with wee plastic animals nesting in her breast pocket, Ali Smith is both understatedly fashionable and anti-cool. She has an intense gaze which lends weight to her small stature - and, she assures me, hairy legs. Over a cafe lunch of chicken casserole and Japanese beer in Ali's adopted city of Cambridge, the conversation has turned to the hairiness of our limbs because of the refreshing hirsuteness of Amber, the pivotal character in her new novel, The Accidental. 'It's about what happens when someone or something you don't know comes in,' says the author, who retains her Highlands accent after many years down south. 'Do you think it's going to kill you? Do you think it's an angel? Do you want to kill it? Do you want to make love to it?' These are the various reactions of the family of four who are staying in a holiday house when the mysterious Amber descends on them. Each character is changed by the summer-long encounter, including Astrid, a girl on the verge of becoming a woman who deals with life by filming it with her video camera. It's a beautiful novel that challenges the reader to live more truthfully. But it is inspired in part by some depressing insights, such as the lack of options for adolescent girls. 'At least the Spice Girls looked like a girl gang,' says Ali of the 1990s group. 'But Girls Aloud look like a pornographic video dream. Those are your role models if you're 12. So who are you going to be now? All you know is you're not supposed to have underarm hair.' Her agenda is a feminist one and she is proud to be part of a tradition of strong women writers, many of them lesbians, who have challenged the form and content of literature over the years: from Woolf to Winterson. She has come a long way since I last interviewed her for DIVA four years ago, when Hotel World was published. That novel went on to be shortlisted for the Booker and Orange prizes - and suddenly everybody knew her name. But back at her narrow terraced house with its stripped floorboards, vases of exotic flowers are testimony to a recent painful chapter in Smith's career. 'They keep arriving,' she says. 'The British Council, Picador - they send flowers to apologise. But apologies don't mend your reputation.' Now in her early 40s, the writer, teacher and critic has spent her working life championing women artists, particularly those who have been overlooked. Yet a bizarre series of attacks on her in the Guardian (for which she is a regular reviewer) in March made it sound as if she had poured scorn on women writers in a book she co-edited with Toby Litt for the British Council: the diverse and daring anthology, New Writing 13 (Picador). Perhaps worst of all was the fact that the publishers had deliberately manufactured the news story to get publicity. 'How could anyone say I don't like women's literature?' asks Ali, still bruised. 'I feel like the girl in my book whose head was taken off [from a photograph] and put on a pornographic body. Nobody in my life - except maybe my mother - has tried to make me something I'm not.' People kept phoning her house for her reaction (though no one rang Toby) and she lost a stone in weight in just one week from the stress. 'Look,' she says, smiling a broad, challenging smile and holding open her jacket to better display her curvy form, 'I look like a girl.' So the Guardian can claim to have given Ali Smith back her waist. But she stands by the actual sentiment that has been so misquoted. She is concerned that many women who want to make a success of their writing are limiting their style and subject matter. 'They copy what they've seen elsewhere, desperate to be published,' she says. 'Politically, it's terrifying.' Sick of the press, Ali has postponed all interviews except this one. She and her film-maker girlfriend, Sarah Wood, are going to take a holiday. The couple met 18 years ago when Sarah directed a play of Ali's for a women's theatre group. 'We have a very good working relationship as well as a very good relationship,' says Ali, sitting in an armchair in their book-lined living room watched by Leo the tabby cat. 'We understand things from the same point of view and yet are very different. I'm northern, she's southern. I'm a bit of a hick,' she adds, laughing, 'and Sarah's not.' Perhaps the historic city of Cambridge is the perfect compromise for the hick and the sophisticate. Ali cycles contentedly round town while her big old Volvo sits outside the house. ('That's my car,' she says proudly. 'It doesn't work.') She has planted apple trees in the front garden and is watching their progress with delight. Later in the year she will start another book. For now, though, she could do with a bit of quiet. The Accidental is published in hardback by Hamish Hamilton on 26 May, price £12.99. A small selection of the author's writing, Ali Smith's Supersonic 70s, is just out in the Pocket Penguin series, price £1.50. This piece first appeared in Diva, June 2005 © Helen Sandler 2005 |
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