I think the title story is my favorite among the pronoun-themed stories in this collection. In it, the narrator is a woman possibly in her fifties in a new relationship with “you” who is a bit younger than herself. Because of her age, the narrator is not sure if she wants to pursue this relationship. […]

In Astute Fiery Luxurious, the narrator who is staying home ill accepts a parcel from the postman before discovering it is a misdelivery. Its address is correct, but no one by the name of the addressee lives in the narrator’s apartment, and there’s something about the parcel that unsettles the narrator. When the narrator’s partner […]

I love the premise in Writ! In it, the protagonist is a forty-something bisexual woman. After being passionately kissed by a young woman – albeit a total stranger – in broad daylight in the middle of London, the protagonist comes home to find her fourteen-year-old self waiting for her! Although the protagonist is beyond happy […]

I Know Something You Don’t Know is a story about Anthony, a little boy suffering from a mysterious illness. Anthony had come home during lunch hour at school one day four months ago and hasn’t been able to leave his bed since then. His mother, Harriet has taken him to see multiple doctors. But none […]

The Second Person is another story in this collection where Smith is focusing on the use of pronouns. Unlike The Third Person which has multiple story-lines, The Second Person is based on a single plot where two lovers are imagining what they’d do in a musical instruments store. The narrator pictures her partner (their genders […]

In No Exit, the unnamed narrator is a woman at a movie theater who witnesses another woman walking through a fire exit during a film screening. The narrator had been to this theater before, so she knows the door the other woman went through is an illegal emergency exit that leads nowhere and locks from […]

In The History of History, the narrator is a teenage girl impacted by her mother’s nervous breakdown. About a month ago out of the blue, the narrator’s mother had told her family that she’s done playing the roles of wife and mother, and insisted that they call her by her name, which is Margaret. We […]

The Third Person is one of the shorter works in Ali Smith’s anthology, and I feel like it might be related two other stories – The Second Person and The First Person – which I’ll be reading later. The Third Person is written in an interesting format. It’s a bunch of different stories/ moments in […]

It is late at night in the middle of November when the story’s unnamed narrator tries to find some peace and quiet in a roadside pub. At this time of the day, only a barmaid and a man are hanging around the pub. The man is a shameless flirt trying to lure the barmaid who […]

Next up in The First Person and Other Stories is The Child, and it is just as amusing as True Short Story! It begins at a Waitrose supermarket where the story’s unnamed narrator – a young woman – goes to do her weekly shopping during her lunch break. The most extraordinary thing happens to her […]

I’m on to my next short story collection, and this time my pick is The First Person and Other Stories by Ali Smith. In its first story, our narrator’s name is also Ali. Ali is at a cafe when she overhears two men at the next table talking about literature, and literature being a subject […]