The Whole Story and Other Stories

From the critically acclaimed author of Hotel World comes a collection of uniquely inventive short stories that thread the labyrinth of coincidence, chance, and connections missed and made.

What happens when you run into Death in a busy train station? (You know he’s Death because when he smiles, your cell phone goes dead.) What if your lover falls in love with a tree? Should you be jealous? From the artist who’s built a seven-foot boat out of secondhand copies of The Great Gatsby to the woman pursued by a band of bagpipers in full regalia, Smith’s characters are offbeat, charming, sexy, and as wonderfully complex as life itself.

“With her quietly dazzling combination of intimate characterization and deft formal play, Ali Smith is quite simply essential reading for anyone who wants to know what’s happening in contemporary British fiction.” —Peter Ho Davies

“Ali Smith is a true original. Her writing startles us with its intimacy and imagination, its poignancy and precision. Her writing has been called a ‘love letter to the world,’ and so it truly seems.” —Joyce Carol Oates