Books

A pretty unsympathetic characterthroughout, Amandine gets savedin a neighbor’s living-room churchafter she’s abandoned the infantRuth to her mother-in-law for sev-eral years—a betrayal that’s partlyto blame for Ruth’s later destruc-tive rages and her cruel tauntingof the younger Racinda. After herloveless marriage ends, Amandinemoves the girls from the east coastto California in an isolated act ofstrength, but Ruth soon goesAWOL—a frustrating plot turn, asshe’s the powder keg that’s fueledthe book thus far. From here onthe focus moves to teenageRacinda who, hobbled by her fam-ily’s troubled past, charts her ownwayward path. She hooks up witha boorish, philandering jazz musi-cian, and that’s just the first of herpoor choices, which are under-standable, if nothing terribly newin a young female character.

There’s a powerful saga of familyand growing up female here, but it’ssquashed under flabby sentencesand poor structure. Racinda is thestrongest of seven (seven!) narra-tors, but when another characterdescribes the way Ruth tells sto-ries—“They merged into one long,intricate knot in your shoelaces orhair, one elaborate thing I stoppedfollowing”—Merrick might as wellbe speaking of many of her ownchapters. She has a habit of hintingthat something very bad and sig-nificant is going to happen (“It wasthat night that tipped them off toall the stuff that was wrong withher”), only to repeatedly undercutthe tension with haphazardly over-wrought prose. Merrick’s said thather “director’s cut” of Girly was700 pages long, but the 500-plus-page final version could still use arigorous edit. Girly can’t be mis-taken for chick lit—in that,Merrick has succeeded—but nei-ther is it the Big Epic Novel itstrives to be. —Susannah J. Felts

THE ACCIDENTAL | Ali SmithA woman appears on the doorstepof an English family’s summerhome with a cheerful “Sorry I’mlate” and plops herself down onthe living room couch. The manassumes she is one of his wife’sdevoted readers; his wife assumesshe’s one of the students her hus-band is sleeping with. The twochildren don’t really care whobrought her. They’re just happy,for now, that she’s here.

Chaos ensues.It’s ironic that Ali Smith has cho-

sen to set her sixth book and firstfull-length novel within the con-fines of a family; earlier this yearshe notoriously accused womenwriters of being too “domestic.”Here each family member takesturns telling the story with anuanced shift in third-person nar-rative. Each voice feels startlinglytrue. Twelve-year-old Astrid isremarkably authentic, her narra-tion a string of almost-revelationsthat end with a wry “whatever,” asis the way she lays claim to the lan-guage of her professor stepfather,words like preternaturally and idest. Some of the time she even usesthem correctly.

The Smart family can’t seem tocommunicate except through lies.The mother, Eve, is a hit novelistwith a severe case of writer’s block,which she hides by typing random-ly on her keyboard whenever shehears someone outside her door.

26 CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 27, 2006 | SECTION ONE

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Son Magnus has participated in aprank at his high school that hasled to the suicide of the victim.And stepfather Michael thinks he’sbeing sneaky about his affairs withstudents, but everyone knows,including the administration. Intothis comes Amber, the strangerunable to tell a lie. “I found him inthe bathroom trying to hang him-self,” she says of Magnus. The fam-ily laughs, having no idea that hismood swings are not of the typicalteenage boy variety.

It’s certainly not dull—anotherinsult Smith threw at “women’sfiction”—but neither does it everbreak from the confines of thefamily. Domestic fiction, at itsbest, can throw back a reflectionof society at large. But while TheAccidental—which came out inthe U.K. last year and thismonth won the Whitbread NovelAward and was short-listed forthe Booker Prize—is smartlywritten, charming, and an enter-taining read, it ends exactlywhere you would expect it to,with lessons learned and every-one better off. In the future, ifSmith is going to make sweepingcriticisms of her fellow writers,she’d better be ready to follow herown advice. —Jessa Crispin

Ink Well by Ben Tausig

Life LessonACROSS 1. Each6. Simile center9. They may be let out in relief

14. Drive in Los Angeles15. Trail16. Civil ______17. Beginning of a hypothesis

proposed by me in 51-Across19. Assassin in black20. Explorer Hernando de ______21. Center of Anytown, USA23. Drench24. Continuation of the hypothesis27. Force member30. 1300 hours31. Billy of Titanic32. Insert sign34. Unagi, at a sushi bar35. Moonroof alternative39. “Elements” of the hypothesis,

letter-wise43. The Godfather author44. NASDAQ debut

45. Patronage46. It’s saved for a rainy day48. Be off50. Cooperative farm worker51. See 17- and 24-Across56. Bilbo’s portrayer57. Like Jay-Z and Beyonce58. Manager’s company?62. Abandon64. Given this puzzle’s theme,

conclusion about the hypothesis66. It begins un año67. Metric base68. Bold poker bet69. Not on deck70. Tokyo, during a shogunate71. First word after a sneeze, often

DOWN 1. MFA part2. Hostess treat3. Tweak4. Man of morals5. Simpsons cry6. Historically disputed French region7. City dept. concerned with trash8. Struggles, as over a decision9. Beach pick-up

10. Pasta suffix11. Infomercial knife12. Fast-disappearing roadside

eateries, for short13. Harry Potter’s professor18. To ______ (everyone)22. Dragonlike25. Hindi bread26. Do not disturb27. USSR, in Cyrillic28. Pearl Harbor’s island29. W, in tabloids33. Overdo it on stage

LAST WEEK: TRIPLE PLAY

51. Half an LP52. Captain Queeg’s ship53. Processor producer54. Given a ticket55. Buy time59. Glamour rival60. Thrift store tag61. Department with ties63. ______-Magnon65. Part of a Queer Eye nickname

34. 70s rock band from Birmingham: abbr.36. Frat party outfit37. Lena of Alias38. “Yoo-hoo!”40. Approximately41. It may get worked up42. Candy name47. “I’ll say!”48. Weird weather cause49. Tattered attire

CHICAGO READER | JANUARY 27, 2006 | SECTION ONE 27