How to be both: A novel

Ali Smith’s highly original literary double-take is a fast-moving, genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fiction.Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique, How To Be Both is a novel all about art’s versatility. There’s a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, the structure gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real - and all life’s givens get given a second chance."The parallels between the two characters, and the possibility that Francescho is either some sort of guardian angel or a spirit who’s unconsciously been summoned, could seem contrived. But Smith’s deliberate obfuscation of what, exactly, is going on makes the novel feel less mawkish and more metaphysical. It’s like a mystery to be marvelled at rather than solved. Her writing is crisp and elegant throughout, elevating Francescho’s anachronistic observances of 21st-century life from predictably comic to poetic ... In How To Be Both, Smith manages the rare feat of conjuring up opaqueness and clarity. There are mysteries and unanswered questions but also hints that parallels and connections abound, that everything in the world is related." - Sophie Gilbert, The AtlanticWinner of the 2015 Women's Prize For FictionAli Smith is the author of several critically acclaimed and award-winning novels and short stories. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. The Accidental was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. How to be Both won the Bailey’s Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and Autumn was shortlisted for the 2017 Booker Prize 2017 and Winter was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2018. "The brilliant Booker-nominated novel from one of our finest authors: How to Be Both is a daring, inventive tale that intertwines the stories of a defiant Renaissance painter and a modern teenage girl. How can one be both--near and far, past and present, male and female? In Ali Smith's new novel, two extraordinary characters inhabit the spaces between categories. In one half of the book, we follow the story of Francescho del Cossa, a Renaissance painter in fifteenth-century Italy who assumes a duel identity, living as both a man and a woman. In the novel's other half, George, a contemporary English teenage girl, is in mourning after the death of her brilliant, rebellious mother. As she struggles to fill the void in her life, George finds her thoughts circling again and again around a whimsical trip she and her mother once made to Italy, to see a certain Renaissance fresco ... These two stories call out to each other in surprising and deeply resonant ways to form a veritable literary double-take, bending the conventions of genre, storytelling, and our own preconceptions"-- Provided by publisher **MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALISTWINNER OF THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTIONWINNER OF THE 2014 GOLDSMITHS PRIZEWINNER OF THE 2014 COSTA NOVEL AWARD WINNER OF THE SALTIRE LITERARY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDA Best Book of the Year: NPR, __Financial Times__**Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith’s novels are like nothing else.Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, __How to be both__ is a novel all about art’s versatility. It’s a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real—and all life’s givens get given a second chance. MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST WINNER OF THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION WINNER OF THE 2014 GOLDSMITHS PRIZE WINNER OF THE 2014 COSTA NOVEL AWARD WINNER OF THE SALTIRE LITERARY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD A Best Book of the Year: NPR, Financial Times Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith’s novels are like nothing else. Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, How to be both is a novel all about art’s versatility. It’s a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real—and all life’s givens get given a second chance. "SHORT-LISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith's novels are like nothing else. How to be both is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There's a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There's the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real--and all life's givens get given a second chance"-- Provided by publisher This is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths, and fictions. There's a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There's the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real - and all life's givens get given a second chance.