Abstract
The story is an explicit motif in Ali Smith’s Hotel World (2001) and How to Be Both (2014), two novels that experiment with the possibilities of narrative voice and explore how the act of storytelling restores the characters’ shattered selves after traumatic experiences. This thesis explores the ghost stories, the elegiac narratives, and the significance of the characters’ autobiographical memories within their present narrative. The close reading of these texts allows an analysis of how Smith’s characters use the constructive force of language to shape their identities – or selves – by the act of telling their stories. Both novels are populated with characters who are initially broken – by death, grief or illness – to the degree that they no longer recognise themselves. During the course of their narratives, some characters manage to mend the rifts that have taken place in their selves, and some do not. My hypothesis is that healing of the self, in these novels, is dependent on the telling – the act of verbalising memories and creating a new self-narrative.