They are themes that most writers touch upon, yet she seems to see them in a new, fresh light.

The themes she chooses to write about are ambitious: love, particularly but not only, that between women, death, loss, guilt, grief, illness, time and the chasms of misunderstanding between couples or the generations, where affection can become lost in impatience and incomprehension. Each section stands in its own right, and yet the stories are deftly interweaved, with characters from one section popping up in another, the actions of one character influencing the fate of another.To say that Smith plans her writings conscientiously gives the impression that she might be an over-deliberate, uninspiring writer, but this is very far from the truth. Hotel World too is divided into five sections, the stories of five very different women during a day in the life of a hotel in the Global Hotel chain. Like for example is divided into two equal parts, the stories of two women with the pleasingly symmetrical names of Amy and Ash, the symmetry, and the fact that the two names are similar to the author's, giving us an uneasy insight into the closeness the three women share. Her novels Like (1997) and Hotel World (2001) also have the tight planning and formal construction of her short stories. Ali Smith possesses the perfect characteristics of the short story writer: rigorous self-discipline in the planning process, an eagle eye for condensing detail, a capacity for using the personal and individual to suggest universal truths and a skill for hinting at a wider world beyond the story, all of which can be seen in her three major collections of short stories Free Love and Other Stories (1995), Other Stories and Other Stories (1999) and The First Person (2008).

Autumn ali smith sparknotes