i really don’t know what to make of this book. the reason i’m rating it so highly is bc of the prose, it was absolutely STUNNING writing, so much that i can’t really believe every single paragraph had me underlining and annotating something due to my awe, but the actual “plot” was so boring. there wasn’t really a plot, nor anything happening of great importance, and when something did happen (right at the end), it came with no explanation nor consequence. i loved the astrid and magnus chapters, i think because they were younger there was more meat to their narration and thought process VS. michael’s perverse power imbalance of having sex with students and eve’s just uninteresting life and writing which she hates. magnus was so hit-or-miss for me as a character, but my sympathy for him knows no bounds. amber can go and fall into a ditch, i don’t understand her character at all. not sure if i’m supposed to or i’m just being thick. i wish we delved more into why astrid was taken out of school for two months, about the bullying, but i guess we can’t have everything. if you enjoy beautiful writing and don’t care abt plot/characters, this book is for you! for sure! just be aware of the content warnings because my goodness… 

this book was so incredibly intriguing to read. it's characters and the relationships between them were definitely the focus of the book as there was no discernible plot. the subtle symbolism and monotone emotion really made me analyze hard -- don't read this book if you're lazy, you won't get anything out of it.
I didn't particularly like Smith's writing style. it is stream of consciousness writing, and it is told from multiple different perspectives, which I didn't really enjoy. I also was disgusted by Amber throughout the whole book and none of the other characters were particularly likable either

Ali Smith’s style of prose is captivating enough that it led me through the whole book with relative speed, but ultimately I was waiting for some kind of plot to appear that just didn’t materialise. There were some fairly disgusting characters in this, I found Amber to be an awful person, and the only two characters I could really connect with emotionally were the two children, Astrid and Magnus. Some trigger warnings on this too for anyone who wants to give it a go.

There are so many sections of this book that I loved but overall I couldn't quite get past all the other content to rate it any higher. Excited to read more of Ali Smith, think their writing will always work best for me when in audiobook form

What in the sexual assault, emotional abuse and innaporopriate behaviour being glorified --


I loved Ali Smith's other books but this one makes me feel sick with how disgusting that character amber is. She manipulates the children, who idolise her because theyre children and she is nice to them while their parents are neglectful, but its horrible because amber is cruel to the girl and literally throws her favorite posession away without any remorse, then gaslights the girl into feeling like its her own fault 🫠😭 she also GROOMS the boy and co-erces him into having sex without asking any consent EVER which is truly so disgusting I cant read one more word of these poor childrens povs glorifying this horrible woman. The other two povs are also shitty bcs the husband is unfaithful and grooms his students and its GRAPHIC 🤮🤮 its also implied that he forces his wife to have sex when she doesnt feel like it😭 I want to delete this book from my mind fr ✋️😫

no because this really accomplished the goal of making me feel stupid and frustrate me and nothing more... it's so conceptual and the prose so chaotic, so all over the place and so strongly character focused it was almost impossible to keep up with it. 

it's insanely abstract, every character is unlikeable (some of them morally inept), every chapter so frustrating and no character OR plot development whatsoever. what was the point? WHAT WAS THE POINTTT