Artful by Ali Smith (2012): A Review

Title: Artful

Author: Ali Smith

Publication Year: 2012

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐💫

Pages: 203

Source: book

Genre: literary fiction, nonfiction

Awards: Best Book of Ideas Prize (2013), Goldsmiths Prize Nominee (2013)

I take genre and classification very seriously. Perhaps too seriously. If a book is marketed as fiction and I open it expecting a novel, but suddenly find myself attending a lecture series, I feel not merely surprised — I feel personally betrayed by publishing.

I usually don’t check too many details before reading a book, unless I get so confused within the first few pages that I have to investigate like a literary detective. Otherwise, there will be confusion, frustration, and a significant amount of cursing from the reading chair.

Anyway, I picked up Artful thinking I was about to read a novel. How wrong could I be? Apparently: very.

It started beautifully. The grief pulled me in immediately, and I was ready to be devastated in a controlled, literary way. But then, suddenly, the grieving MC begins reading the lecture notes of their dead beloved, and before I knew it, I had accidentally enrolled in a seminar.

To be fair, the first lecture interested me. As someone whose life involves a lot of lecturing, I understand the impulse. Once you lecture for a living, you apparently become spiritually incapable of stopping. But then it kept going. And going. And suddenly I felt less like I was reading fiction and more like I was back in academic mode, preparing to write a paper — which is especially dangerous when you are already, in real life, reading for and writing an actual paper.

The fictional sections? Gorgeous. The way Smith writes grief could easily be five stars. But just when I was fully in the emotional zone, grieving alongside the MC, the book would politely grab me by the collar and throw me back into another lecture.

And listen, I understand that the lectures are integral to the book’s meditation on grief, art, and absence. I do. But did we need lectures for three-quarters of the book to make the point?

Personally, I would have preferred a little less seminar and a little more sobbing.

So yes: brilliant in parts, beautiful in parts, but also a reminder that sometimes you pick up a novel and accidentally audit a course.