VOTES FOR THE ACCIDENTAL

Whitney Pastorek ...writer, musician, and international star of stage and screen. currently works as a correspondent for Entertainment Weekly. exec editor of Pindeldyboz (stories). http://www.whittlz.com/ ...
OK, so both feature terrific crazy people. Both natter on about the philosophical and practical with equal weight. Home Land has the great line, "Each of us walks to the beat of a different drummer. It’s just that some of these drummers suck," and The Accidental makes lots of awesome Sound of Music references. But I’ve read stories similar to Lipsyte’s before (if not with equal talent, then at least with equal tone), while Ali Smith’s unexpected prose managed to suck me way the hell into what’s really not much more than a generic domestic melodrama. That takes some doing. She gets my vote.

Georgie Lewis ...marketing team at Powells.com...
Julian Barnes calls book awards "Posh Bingo." After judging this year’s tournament, I’m inclined to agree—about the bingo part, if not the posh. Even so, the finalists surprised me in their…ordinariness. I never found Home Land engrossing, hilarious, deep, or any of the other superfluous adjectives bestowed upon it. I found it banal and irritating. Whilst not in love with The Accidental, I’ll give it my vote because it does get to the psychological make-up of some of the characters. Home Land by all accounts seems to be the class favorite, so I guess it will triumph as Sarvas predicts. I just don’t agree with him when he presumes it is "well-deserved."

Jessica Francis Kane ...first collection of stories, Bending Heaven. essays & humor for McSweeneys among others. contributor to Morning News...
Since I picked Home Land in the first round, I’ve had the pleasure of watching it win steadily. Like the tired coach in a made-for-television movie, I’ve felt myself drawing closer to that poignant, final scene where the team prevails and the poor old sap gets credit for believing from the beginning. Then I read The Accidental, and all my visions of hugs and high-fives flew out the window. Both books are terrific, but where Home Land perfects one voice, The Accidental perfects four. Lipsyte’s "Teabag" is heir apparent to a noble line of apathetic narrators, but Smith’s Astrid, Eve, Magnus, and the peculiar Amber who changes them all, seem new to me. I agree with Maud Newton that Smith’s prose is sometimes as distracting as it is compelling, but still I was impressed. I think the Rooster should be sent across the pond. Hope he likes warm beer.

Nell James ...17-year-old multi-instrumentalist/composer, web designer, artist and unschooler ...
My first-round choice, The Accidental, survived by accident (or conspiracy). It just "ended up" here, like me: the Token Teen. But Home Land seems beloved by my Rooster elders. My thoughts in haiku form:
... Neither book’s my fav / Home Land was well written, no / Accounting for taste.
Pick: The Accidental

Adrienne Brodeur ...first novel Man Camp...
Not surprisingly, neither Sam Lipsyte’s Home Land or Ali Smith’s The Accidental would have been my pick for "novel of the year." Let alone the coveted Rooster Award. But given that I must choose a book—though can we all admit that we’re more than a little jealous of Dale Peck’s approach?—I pick The Accidental. Why? For one, it actually is a novel. Call me old fashioned, but I appreciate plot—even just a little—and Smith’s novel had one. As for Lipsyte’s 229-page rant? I admit it made me laugh out loud a couple of times, but in the end, there was just no there there.

Kate Schlegel ...an associate editor at The Morning News, an assistant news editor at WSJ.com...
In The Accidental, we get an insightful portrait of a crumbling family, collected from the viewpoints of each of its members. The parallel plot developments keep the story moving forward and the surprising climax gives the payoff I want in a good novel. Very early on in Home Land, it became clear that Lewis Miner is a character in the vein of Ignatius P. Reilly, never a favorite of mine. I got about 130 pages in before giving up in frustration, still unable to determine what, exactly, the plot was and tired of all the masturbating and Catamounts. Some people will like this book. I am not one of them. The Accidental, all the way.

Rosecrans Baldwin ... Morning News co-editor ...
I really enjoyed The Accidental, but I was ready to love Home Land—everyone told me how much it made them laugh. I didn’t laugh once and I feel like the Grinch for saying so. There wasn’t anything to bind me to the text, and though I enjoyed Lipsyte’s ridiculous set-ups and dialogue, I excitedly give my point to Smith.

Jessa Crispin ...the editor of Bookslut.com ...
While I wasn’t blown away by either book, I did enjoy reading both. The Accidental was prettily written, and I loved Astrid, but I had an increasingly difficult time caring about any of the other characters. I thought Home Land was hilarious at first, but it didn’t really go anywhere. And that ending at the reunion was awful and forced. I’m going to have to go with The Accidental, if only for the remarkable voice of Astrid, and the fact that a bad ending, for me, ruins the whole book. huh contrast Womack's appreciative 10x rereading of Home Land's unexpected final moments.

Eleanor Bukowsky ...Adult Services Librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library...
Unlike some other judges who have already weighed in, I am not a fan of Lipsyte’s annoying account of Lewis (Teabag) Miner’s profane, jejune, and self-absorbed newsletters to his New Jersey alma mater. Miner has been called a modern-day Holden Caulfield, but that is a profound insult to Salinger, whose anthem of adolescent agony is far more poignant and universally meaningful than Lipsyte’s. Although Miner is ostensibly an adult, you would never know it from the way he behaves. This is man has no real profession, no serious relationships, except with his druggie friend, and no goals. Yet, he criticizes the shallowness, materialism, and arrogance of his former classmates whose lives have turned out very differently from his. Entertaining and hilarious satire? No. Boring and irritating tripe? Yes.
well. you're out. so much for my guess about a librarian's pick.
I breezed through The Accidental in less than a day. As everyone must know by now, this book deals with a "skillful freeloader who lived by charming her way into people’s houses." The year is 2003, and thirtyish Amber MacDonald barges into a summer home inhabited by the Smart family in Norfolk, England. Amber is a beautiful woman with a forceful and charismatic personality, and the emotional depth charge that she hurls at the Smarts explodes their complacency and changes them forever.Initially, I was put off by Ali Smith’s puns, wordplay, and quirky style. There are long, meandering passages written in the third person, in which the author recounts each individual’s random thoughts. There are also a few sonnets, many sentence fragments, and of course, no quotation marks. The Accidental is a non-linear novel that is challenging to read and absorb.However, I loved much of the descriptive writing, and the characters are all beautifully delineated and fully realized. This is a work of sharp social satire in which Smith explores the elusive nature of truth, the various roles that people play to get what they want, the fragility of interpersonal relationships, and how chance, in a short time, can alter a person’s entire existence. I was moved by the story of this dysfunctional family and deeply invested in how it would all play out. In my humble opinion, The Rooster should go to The Accidental.