Generally speaking, when I discover a new favourite author, I go on a massive binge of their stuff and don’t read anything else for ages. This was the case when I first fell in love with Kurt Vonnegut, but with Ali Smith I’ve been desperately trying to ignore my cravings and ration her books, because there are only a handful of them. She’s done plenty of short story collections to ease the withdrawal rattle, but I am a novel reader through and through. So, since devouring Girl Meets Boy I have read (count them) four whole books before jumping on her debut novel, Like, like a smackhead who’s spilled her methadone.

Like has given me further proof that Ali Smith and I are psychologically linked. We were both born in Inverness. We both now live in England. She writes especially well from the perspective of a child and I have the mentality of a child. And now, in Like, she says that Virginia Woolf is rubbish and Carson McCullers is ace. When I read those bits I was like “I think Virginia Woolf is rubbish too!” and “Carson McCullers is ace!” When I move to Leicester I’m going to go to Cambridge for the day and look for her so I can tell her all about our psychological link. As if she’d need it explaining… I should probably also slip her a fiver because she hasn’t actually benefitted financially from me buying her books at all. But my auntie did once buy me a brand new copy of Other Stories And Other Stories so I guess that’s okay.

Anyhow, I wanted to tell you about buying ‘uncorrected bound proofs’ today. Because the copy of Like that I’ve got is not actually the finally published version, meaning that there are a handful of spelling mistakes and the printing isn’t of great quality. Publishers send out preliminary copies like this to be proof-read before publication, and they often find their way into the second hand market. Before reading Like, I’d also read an uncorrected proof of Exit A by the dude who wrote Jarhead. Sometimes they’re more expensive that ordinary copies, but if you’re a big fan of a particular author, it’s nice to have something especially limited. This is the reason why footballers drive Aston Martins.

Ali Smith - Like
Publication date: 1997
Publisher: Virago
Price then: unpriced
Price now: £14
Purchased from: Oxfam

From the synopsis: “A seductive and exhilarating story of what it means to be alive at the edge of the twentieth century: here is a story of what it’s like.”