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Shire
In four short stories – fusions of poetry – Ali Smith pays tribute to the sources, the people and the places which produce and nurture life and art. In an opening up of norths and souths, she traces unexpected conduits between Cambridge and the north of Scotland. Like all of Ali Smith’s work, here spot-lit by Sarah Wood’s delicate art, this is a book that will blow fresh air through the mind and set readers’ pulses racing.
125 pages, Hardcover
First published May 31, 2013
3 people are currently reading
286 people want to read
About the author
Ali Smith
152 books5,385 followersAli Smith is a writer, born in Inverness, Scotland, to working-class parents. She was raised in a council house in Inverness and now lives in Cambridge. She studied at Aberdeen, and then at Cambridge, for a Ph.D. that was never finished. In a 2004 interview with writing magazine Mslexia, she talked briefly about the difficulty of becoming ill with chronic fatigue syndrome for a year and how it forced her to give up her job as a lecturer at University of Strathclyde to focus on what she really wanted to do: writing. She has been with her partner Sarah Wood for 17 years and dedicates all her books to her.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
August 28, 2015
This slim volume of four stories - two fiction, two biographical/autobiographical - is not the usual fare of Smith's writing. The two short stories are rather mythical. The two other stories rather biographical.
However, the book holds some interest for me as the stories about Olive Fraser and Smith's meeting with Fraser's friend and biographer Helena Mennie Shire, and of course Smith's own story, reference a lot of places that are quite close to me.
Aberdeen University is literally a ten minute walk away. Cornhill Hospital, where Olive Fraser was a patient for a period of time, is a place I pass by several times a week. Inverness and Nairn are both in easy reach.
And, yet, there is more that moves me about the stories than just passing familiarity with the locations. I was intrigued, too, by Fraser's poetry and how it reflected her state of mind - or rather her different states of mind. The treatment for a mis-diagnosed mental condition she received strongly reminded me of a favourite author of mine who suffered the fatal consequences of a similar mis-diagnosis only some thirty-odd years earlier.
The friendship between the two writers, Fraser and Shire, would play a part in motivating Smith to pursue her own writing.
It is maybe in this context, too, that the last of the four stories - The Wound - was conceived. Like all of Smith's works, Shire is a book about the power of words and language and art. The power to transform. And just as Helena Shire had dedicated her working life to investigate and uncover medieval and renaissance Scots text which would transform the understanding and context of the known interpretation of text from that era, so Smith's story tells of a transformation of man by a self-inflicted admission of vulnerability.
Anyway, I had not heard of either Olive Fraser or Helena Shire, but now all I really want to do is to browse the archives at Aberdeen University library and find out more about them.
However, the book holds some interest for me as the stories about Olive Fraser and Smith's meeting with Fraser's friend and biographer Helena Mennie Shire, and of course Smith's own story, reference a lot of places that are quite close to me.
Aberdeen University is literally a ten minute walk away. Cornhill Hospital, where Olive Fraser was a patient for a period of time, is a place I pass by several times a week. Inverness and Nairn are both in easy reach.
And, yet, there is more that moves me about the stories than just passing familiarity with the locations. I was intrigued, too, by Fraser's poetry and how it reflected her state of mind - or rather her different states of mind. The treatment for a mis-diagnosed mental condition she received strongly reminded me of a favourite author of mine who suffered the fatal consequences of a similar mis-diagnosis only some thirty-odd years earlier.
The friendship between the two writers, Fraser and Shire, would play a part in motivating Smith to pursue her own writing.
It is maybe in this context, too, that the last of the four stories - The Wound - was conceived. Like all of Smith's works, Shire is a book about the power of words and language and art. The power to transform. And just as Helena Shire had dedicated her working life to investigate and uncover medieval and renaissance Scots text which would transform the understanding and context of the known interpretation of text from that era, so Smith's story tells of a transformation of man by a self-inflicted admission of vulnerability.
Anyway, I had not heard of either Olive Fraser or Helena Shire, but now all I really want to do is to browse the archives at Aberdeen University library and find out more about them.
February 17, 2016
This is probably only essential reading for the Ali Smith-completist, especially as the first two stories (out of four) now can be found in Public Library and Other Stories: the first, "The Beholder", is fiction; the second, "The Poet", a hybrid.
The third is interesting for the autobiographical tidbits about 'Alison' (Ali) -- her being a practicing Catholic (at least through part of her time in Cambridge); her collaboration with her later life-partner, Sarah -- though the story is ultimately about the scholar-professor Helena Mennie Shire, who gave the young Alison a 'commission' to write about her deceased friend, the poet Olive Fraser. Though the second story is not the radio-play Shire envisioned (no one was interested), twenty-five years later "The Commission" has been fulfilled.
The final story, "The Wound", takes as its inspiration a 16th-century poem by Alexander Montgomerie. It reflects back to the first story with another, though very different, depiction of a chest wound, both related to withdrawn love: a story that subtly extols patience with its ensuing rewards.
The third is interesting for the autobiographical tidbits about 'Alison' (Ali) -- her being a practicing Catholic (at least through part of her time in Cambridge); her collaboration with her later life-partner, Sarah -- though the story is ultimately about the scholar-professor Helena Mennie Shire, who gave the young Alison a 'commission' to write about her deceased friend, the poet Olive Fraser. Though the second story is not the radio-play Shire envisioned (no one was interested), twenty-five years later "The Commission" has been fulfilled.
The final story, "The Wound", takes as its inspiration a 16th-century poem by Alexander Montgomerie. It reflects back to the first story with another, though very different, depiction of a chest wound, both related to withdrawn love: a story that subtly extols patience with its ensuing rewards.
July 30, 2013
Shire is a companion piece to Artful, a series of lectures interlarded with autobio and cloying second-person narrative, in the form of four short stories-cum-essays-cum-autobios. ‘The Beholder’ is a short story commissioned for a lit festival, and alongside ‘The Wound’ is only tangentially or tonally related to the knotty nub of the book. In the former, a woman is unable to diagnose her pesky medical complaint until she starts spiking thorns and blossoming roses, and the latter is a fable-like oddity with Cupid and an obscure Scots poet. The two longest pieces are ‘The Poet’ and ‘The Commission,’ which indulge Ali’s passion for the esoteric: in this case, the Scots poet Olive Fraser and the academic Helena Shire (the book is dedicated to both), two ex-Cambridge ladies who find themselves BURIED. ‘The Poet’ is typically impish and exuberant, with a melancholy bassline (Fraser’s struggle and incarceration in an asylum is a pretty bitter nectar to swallow), and plays the graceful notes common to the best of her work. ‘The Commission’ is a straighter autobio: a frustratingly brief nugget of life-as-Ali that would benefit from proper essaying in an essay. Her life from Inverness to Cambridge, and her remarkable flowering as a bookworm and academic and writer is lightly sketched here. Between each piece, small photos by Sarah Wood and pleasant etchings on square-lined paper. Shire surely shines, but is slight.
March 21, 2018
Dear Editor
Caveat emptor: Don't be fooled like me: there is nary a hobbit to be found anywhere in this gawdamn sonofabitch! No Bilbo, Frodo, Merry, Pip...not even the fat Sam bastard. I feel cheated. Truth in advertising! All I read was a quartet of raw, autobiographical interstitials centered around 'lurve' that is the closest we'll likely ever get to an autobiography of one of the absolute best of our time, c. NOW. Greeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaat! Where are the round doors and hobbitholes again?
REPEAT: There were no quirky-hairy hobbitfeet, 'elevensies,' latent same-sex sensual longing, flagons of hobbitmead or hobbitale, or...uh...um...magic and shit. It's like naming a book Hobbiton and having it be about an albino private detective in search of the parents who abandoned him and vanished traceless in 1977 (the one case he may never close, and, with that, never find the closure he so desperately needs to finally find...himself.)
Signed,
Bummed-in-Bilbodom/Took-less in Seattle
Caveat emptor: Don't be fooled like me: there is nary a hobbit to be found anywhere in this gawdamn sonofabitch! No Bilbo, Frodo, Merry, Pip...not even the fat Sam bastard. I feel cheated. Truth in advertising! All I read was a quartet of raw, autobiographical interstitials centered around 'lurve' that is the closest we'll likely ever get to an autobiography of one of the absolute best of our time, c. NOW. Greeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaat! Where are the round doors and hobbitholes again?
REPEAT: There were no quirky-hairy hobbitfeet, 'elevensies,' latent same-sex sensual longing, flagons of hobbitmead or hobbitale, or...uh...um...magic and shit. It's like naming a book Hobbiton and having it be about an albino private detective in search of the parents who abandoned him and vanished traceless in 1977 (the one case he may never close, and, with that, never find the closure he so desperately needs to finally find...himself.)
Signed,
Bummed-in-Bilbodom/Took-less in Seattle
November 6, 2014
This is a set of four short stories, the beholder, the poet, the commission and the wound, that are aiming to blend and meld fiction, myth, biography and poetry, with very strong influences from Virginia Woolf.
The first, the beholder is about a woman who visits a doctor about something growing from her collarbone, and how it becomes part of her. The poet is a fictionalised biography of the poet Olive Fraser, and the commission is a similar exercise on Helena Shire. It finishes with the wound, and the changing of a man from one entitiy to another.
In the end I thought that this was ok, it is beautifully written, and Smith has a mastery and control of language that make some of the passages soar. But I couldn't really get a long with it. The Illustrations and photography by Sarah Wood are good though, and even though this is only a small part of the book, I thought that the attention to detail by the publishers was excellent, from the font to the binding and layout of the book.
The first, the beholder is about a woman who visits a doctor about something growing from her collarbone, and how it becomes part of her. The poet is a fictionalised biography of the poet Olive Fraser, and the commission is a similar exercise on Helena Shire. It finishes with the wound, and the changing of a man from one entitiy to another.
In the end I thought that this was ok, it is beautifully written, and Smith has a mastery and control of language that make some of the passages soar. But I couldn't really get a long with it. The Illustrations and photography by Sarah Wood are good though, and even though this is only a small part of the book, I thought that the attention to detail by the publishers was excellent, from the font to the binding and layout of the book.
September 26, 2020
Sain Turu raamatukogust ka ühe senilugemata Ali Smithi, mis on alati erk elamus, eriti et mul on minu teada lugemata Smithe ainult umbes mõni üksik järel ("Like" ja aastaaegade viimane osa, ehk siis tema esimene ja seni viimane romaan, aga vb on veel mõni seni kahe silma vahele jäänud palake, nagu seesinatsne siin)...
Raamat ise on veidi veider ses osas, et esimene lugu on ilukirjanduslik (väga ilus) ja siis kaks elust enesest ja naistest Cambridge'is ja Šotimaast ja tekitavad hulka mõtteid ses osas, et kui palju ikka on neid naisi olnud, kes oleksid igasugu vägevaid asju teinud (ja tegid sellele vaatamata), kui neid (eriti veel valediagnoosidega) vaimuhaiglatesse poleks pandud ja et kuidas mingid osad maailmast täiesti maha vaikitakse või unustatakse ja keegi saab need taas avastada ja palju muid olulisi asjii. Ja siis üks väike õpetlik-kaunis palake veel. Kiire ja õhuline nagu alati.
Mõnikord asjad haakuvad kuidagi eriti ootamatult hästi ja siin mainitakse Nan Sheperdit, keda ma just samuti loen, ja kogu andeka kirjaniku ja vaimuhaigla teema seostub Janet Frame'iga, kelle raamatu "Owls do cry", mille ma suvel pooleli jätsin, sest meie kodune väljaanne on peaaegu loetamatu trükikvaliteediga, sain ma samuti just raamatukogust, et jätkata. Unes nägin suuri lumekakke, kes Viinistul ühte mahajäetud aeda laskusid ja keda pidin kasside kombel kammima.
Raamat ise on veidi veider ses osas, et esimene lugu on ilukirjanduslik (väga ilus) ja siis kaks elust enesest ja naistest Cambridge'is ja Šotimaast ja tekitavad hulka mõtteid ses osas, et kui palju ikka on neid naisi olnud, kes oleksid igasugu vägevaid asju teinud (ja tegid sellele vaatamata), kui neid (eriti veel valediagnoosidega) vaimuhaiglatesse poleks pandud ja et kuidas mingid osad maailmast täiesti maha vaikitakse või unustatakse ja keegi saab need taas avastada ja palju muid olulisi asjii. Ja siis üks väike õpetlik-kaunis palake veel. Kiire ja õhuline nagu alati.
Mõnikord asjad haakuvad kuidagi eriti ootamatult hästi ja siin mainitakse Nan Sheperdit, keda ma just samuti loen, ja kogu andeka kirjaniku ja vaimuhaigla teema seostub Janet Frame'iga, kelle raamatu "Owls do cry", mille ma suvel pooleli jätsin, sest meie kodune väljaanne on peaaegu loetamatu trükikvaliteediga, sain ma samuti just raamatukogust, et jätkata. Unes nägin suuri lumekakke, kes Viinistul ühte mahajäetud aeda laskusid ja keda pidin kasside kombel kammima.
March 8, 2023
Definitely not my new favourite book by her but at the same time not a bad one. She has many references to Scotland, the landscape, where she grew up, Scottish writers and artists and I guess I managed to understand only half of them. I can see how her writing style was shaped over the years and resulted in the marvellous Seasonal quartet. Nonetheless, it was nice to read one of her earlier books.
April 11, 2019
Ali Smith, offering kindness and hope, as always. And much more...
June 22, 2013
Loved the first and fourth of 4 but hope her next one is a novel or SS collection :-)
March 3, 2024
One does not analyze Ali Smith, or try to review her. One just absorbs and is glad to live in a world that has Ali Smith in it, writing. She makes the reader feel more whole.
January 1, 2016
I love spending time with Ali Smith's stories. Thank you for introducing me to Olive Fraser and Helena Shire. A delightful little collection, part story, part biography.
It doesn't strike me as a supplement to Artful and I don't think it should be read in this way at all. It's its own little volume, a gift to Helena Shire.
It doesn't strike me as a supplement to Artful and I don't think it should be read in this way at all. It's its own little volume, a gift to Helena Shire.
February 9, 2017
I thought it would be worth noting that the first two stories in this short, yet lovingly put-together collection are also published in Smith's Public Library and Other Stories, so you might have come across these before. However, the entire book is worth picking up for 'The Commission'; a blend of autobiography and eulogy that is both moving and encouraging. As always, Smith gleefully plays with what writing can be.
February 11, 2024
Thought this might be about the countryside but it was really more of a live letter to Olive Fraser and Helena Shire. Silly me but Ali Smith's writing is always a joy and it was wonderful to learn about the two remarkable women.
May 31, 2020
A bit of a meander, this book, but an ever-interesting one.
September 13, 2022
Surprising at every turn these short stories are like nothing I have come across before - whimsical and memorable
May 14, 2023
As I have said many times - I prefer Ali Smith's novels. I just don't get on that well with her short stories.
July 8, 2025
3.5 stars.
December 28, 2025
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book from the extract but it was poetic and lovely and well-researched - an interesting little collection!
March 5, 2015
I love the way she makes me enjoy language.
February 19, 2016
Gorgeous , lyrical, earthy, moving.
April 23, 2016
3.5 stars
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews