«Distinguished by Smith's trademark ability to unearth flashes of truth and depth in the everyday, «The First Person and Other Stories» sparkles with warmth and humanity. In one story, a middle-aged woman conducts a poignant conversation with her fourteen-year-old self. In another, an innocent supermarket shopper finds in her trolley a foul-mouthed, insulting, yet beautiful child. And in a third story that challenges the boundaries between fiction and reality, the narrator, 'Ali', drinks tea, phones a friend, and muses on the surprising similarities between a short story and a nymph... Fans of Ali Smith will be delighted, amused and moved by these stories from a writer at the very top of her game.»

Love stories are not always about hearts and flowers. In this deliciously different celebration of love, romance is all about having a good row (and not always having to say you're sorry). From trivial everyday quarrels, such as a dispute over a bride's new hat in Dorothy Parker's 'Here We Are' and an argument about whether to close the screen door in Lydia Davis's 'Disagreement', to more serious arguments where the truth is in doubt, such in Raymond Carver's 'Intimacy', relationships of every kind — devoted, comfortable, passionate, intimate, bad-tempered — are here.

The Smart family's lacklustre holiday in Norwich is turned upside down when a beguiling stranger called Amber appears, bringing with her love, joy, pain and upheaval. The Smarts try to make sense of their bewildering emotions as Amber tramples over family boundaries and forces them to think about their world and themselves in an entirely new way.

Short story collection first published by Granta in 1999.

How do you ever know the whole story? How do you ever know even part of the story? How do you find meaning when chance and coincidence could, just be chance and coincidence? Presenting connections and missed connections, this collection of stories is an inquiry into things ranging from flies and trees and books to sex, art, drunkenness, and love.

This story brings alive five characters, one of whom is dead, during one night in a hotel. The author traces their intersecting lives, examining the themes of time, chance, money and death.

A teenage girl finds unexpected sexual freedom on a trip to Amsterdam. A woman trapped at a dinner party comes up against an ugly obsession. The stories in FREE LOVE are about desire, memory, sexual ambiguity and the imagination. In the harsh light of dislocation, the people in them still find connections, words blowing in the street, love in unexpected places. Ali Smith examine show things come together and how they break apart. She disconcerts and affirms with the lightest touch, to make us love and live differently.