Time out of Time: Transworld Identity and the Collapse of Ontological Boundaries in The Accidental by Ali Smith.

Abstract

This article looks at Ali Smith’s The Accidental as a novel in which pastiche and mashups of content create a kind of cross media storytelling that pushes the ontological boundaries of narrative. At the centre of the novel is Amber, a mysterious visitor introduced here as a transworld identity who weaves the novel’s plot by using contents and knowledge belonging to extradiegetic worlds and their timelines. Thus, she is in a position to interact with the other characters as if they were metareferential elements of the story and change their fate. By using Amber as a literary device which oscillates between different temporalities, Smith also explores how language mediates contemporary subjectivity, which is divided into a variety of fictional realities.