The Accidental

The Accidental is a 2005 novel by the Scottish author Ali Smith. It follows a middle-class English family visited by an uninvited guest, Amber, while they are on holiday in a small village in Norfolk. The novel was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, the Man Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and it won the Whitbread Award.

The narrative moves between the members of the household rather than following Amber, which is how the book registers her effect as four separate disturbances rather than one. The mother, Eve, is a writer of biographies. Eve is a biographer, which makes her the member of the family most practised at explaining other people and the least able to work out what Amber is doing to her household.

Reviews were positive, and one contemporary notice in Entertainment Weekly described the book as not much more than a clever stunt while praising the way Smith carries it off, which is a fair summary of the mixed response the formal playfulness drew. The consequences of the visit extend beyond the holiday, so the novel's ending is about aftermath rather than resolution.