I don't read contemporary fiction very often because I generally find it disappointing and Ali Smith's "There But For The" was no exception. I struggled through this book and nearly stopped reading it several times.The story is about a man's absence after he locks himself in a guest bedroom in the midst of the worst dinner party ever. It's divided into four sections (There, But, For and The.) It started out as mildly amusing but as the setions wore on the book got worse and worse. The final section, a stream of consciousness rambling of a precocious preteen was barely readable.There are lots of puns and word play in this too, which presented lots of opportunities for eye rolling.If the point of it all was to long for the absence of this book from my nightstand, it succeeded. This book had some warm, lovely characters, and the whole mood of the meandering, wandering plotline was the same, as it was build more on the people than the happenings, and these people just happened to get tangled with the main event (which was pretty much the only event on the whole book) - the man that shut himself of on a room that wasn't his. The formation of different, small glimpses to the lives of the man's acquaintances worked out very well, and I really enjoyed reading about them - the reason I'm giving this only three stars is that I didn't feel this was enough. The plot and the idea were really cute, yes, the characters were interesting and grew close to the reader, but there really wasn't that much going on so I started to lose interest in the central things very fast. So I can't really say that this worked for me, even though I can very well see why others would like it. I feel that the finnish translation was a bit clumsy and even plain bad at places, also, so this very likely took some of my overall enjoyment away. Apparently the phase 'fact is' is pretty hard to get right in Finnish.
Do You like book Suíte Em Quatro Movimentos (2011)?
The dinner party scene was inspired, but the rest of it was meandering and frustrating.
—taw913
A dinner-paarty guest locks himself in a bathroom - and won't come out.
—lilicampello
