There but for the

There but for the is a 2011 novel by the Scottish writer Ali Smith, first published in Britain by Hamish Hamilton and in the United States by Pantheon. It is set in Greenwich, London in 2009 and 2010.

Miles Garth attends a dinner party and then locks himself into one of the bedrooms and stays there. The novel gives the story to four other people, each with a connection to him or to the household: a woman who was at the party, a man whose mother knew Miles, a schoolgirl who has been reading about him, and a woman who takes an interest for reasons of her own. Their accounts, along with the news coverage of the standoff, make up the book.

Smith writes four sections in different voices with a good deal of wordplay, and her subject is what a refusal to take part can mean to the people around it. It was named as one of the best books of the year by several reviewers and is one of the novels that made her reputation in the 2010s.