FREE LOVE AND OTHER STORIES (REISSUE)

Se lee rápido y cómodamente. Tan bueno como todo lo de esta autora.

This is the kind of book I'll come back to again and again. A detailed and vivid sense of character and place emerges through each and every story, with most conveying some sense of loss. 'College' broke my heart while 'Text for the day' is a triumph of surrealist anarchy. There is nothing not to love about this memorable and evocative collection of stories. They touch you and move you in every single way.

Free Love and Other Stories is the wonderful Ali Smith’s first published collection of short stories, almost a quarter of a century old now, so expect references to cassette tapes, floppy discs and telephone boxes. I don’t often describe writers as wonderful, as most make mistakes and do other things to wind me up, sometimes detracting from the narrative in the process, but Smith consistently transports me to and immerses me in a world where nothing else matters, which is a rare and precious talent, and just what you want from fiction: to absolutely lose yourself in it. But there’s even more to her body of work than just that, as if this weren’t enough: there’s an undercurrent of political intelligence and compassion that runs throughout, most overtly evident in her recent seasonal quartet of novels Autumn/Winter/Spring/Summer, yet somehow always there, and so you’ll find it here too, right from the first page.From the titular tale of a young woman’s first sexual experience with a prostitute in Amsterdam, where she’s gone to take in the artsy sights after finishing school, accompanied by a somewhat conservative friend who she’s experiencing strong and unreciprocated feelings for, to the haunting stories of bereavement and loss, to the surreal snippets of The touching of wood and Cold iron, all the way through to my personal favourite, the penultimate tale in this brief but immaculate collection, the spooky and dreamlike The unthinkable happens to people every day, Free Love and Other Stories will hold you spellbound from start to all-too-rapid finish. At just 149 pages it’s an all too quick read, but you’ll want to hang onto your copy, and dip into it again and again over the ensuing years as you grow into the stories and they grow into you – there’s a timelessness here that will not dissipate, that will come back to you at 3am as you wonder, where did I first hear that, oh yes, oh god yes, now what did I do with that ratty old paperback? I must have a look.Prior to being published, Smith began a PhD at Cambridge on American and Irish modernism, an endeavour side-lined by her burgeoning career as a playwright, but there’s little of Paul Auster or Saul Bellow here, with their exaggerated macho swagger, their fictionalised recollections of relentless sexual conquests, and their at times crude solipsism; instead, there’s a gentle and mellifluous take on sexual relations, and occasionally the sex act itself, and the mysterious act of living, and everything else besides. I’m glad that I bought my copy second-hand, and that I therefore have an edition the cover of which looks a little dated and of its time, and which consequently seems, somewhat counter-intuitively, to reinforce that timelessness. Four stars.

Even speed-reading I couldn't finish this. I re-read the rave reviews, went back to be challenged by another few pages but ultimately gave up. A book that drowns in its own self-importance and pretentiousness. I left this in a second hand bookshop in Ho Chi Minh City. And that's probably the most interesting thing I can say about this book.