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|summary=Unashamedly literary in style, Smith gives us a playful and pun-filled feast of word play set around a man who locks himself in a spare room while attending a dinner party. Intelligent, clever and often funny, it's also sometimes difficult to work out where it is heading.

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If you are the type of reader who thinks that the mark of a good book is a plot, then step away from this book: you'll hate it. Ali Smith's intricately clever and often funny ''There but for the'' is very much at the literary end of the fiction spectrum. Not in terms of the language used though - Smith uses simple language, and a '''LOT''' of puns, and if anything, as the title suggests, she's more interested in the little words. It's playful and strangely affecting, while at the same time a little affected and often slightly irritatingly free flowing.