The first person and other stories

The First Person and Other Storiesis the fourth collection of short stories by Ali Smith.

The First Person and Other Storieseffortlessly appeals to our hearts, heads and funny bones. Always intellectually playful, but also very moving and funny, Smith explores the ways and whys of storytelling. In one, a middle-aged woman conducts a poignant conversation with her gauche fourteen-year-old self. In another, an innocent supermarket shopper finds in her trolley a foul-mouthed, insulting and beautiful child. Challenging the boundaries between fiction and reality, a third presents its 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 stories inThe First Person and Other Storiesare packed full of ideas, jokes, nuance and compassion. Ali Smith and the short story are made for each other.

'Smith's is a profoundly optimistic vision. These stories are frightening yet funny, and the sheer exuberance and playfulness of her language endows dark matters with a lightness of touch'New Statesman

'She's a genius, genuinely modern in the heroic, glorious sense' Alain de Botton

'Terrific . . . hurrah for Ali Smith . . . The best short-story writers make it look as easy as making a cup of tea. Ali Smith is one of these . . . A bold and brilliant collection of stories by a writer unafraid to give it to us as it is'Times

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

Ali Smith is the author of novelsGirl Meets Boy,Like,The Accidental,Hotel WorldandThere but for the. She has published the short story collectionsThe First Person and Other Stories, Free Love and Other Stories,Other Stories and Other StoriesandThe Whole Story and Other Stories. She has been twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, twice nominated for the Orange Prize and won the Whitbread Novel of the Year in 2005.