How to be Both

Smith, Ali

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141025204 ISBN 13: 9780141025209

Publisher: Penguin, 2015

WINNER OF THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2015WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2014SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014WINNER OF THE 2014 COSTA NOVEL AWARDWINNER OF THE SALTIRE SOCIETY LITERARY BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2014NOMINATED FOR THE FOLIO PRIZE 2015How to be both is the dazzling, award-winning novel by Ali SmithPassionate, 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., 'Brims with palpable joy' Daily Telegraph'She's a genius, genuinely modern in the heroic, glorious sense' Alain de Botton'I take my hat off to Ali Smith. Her writing lifts the soul' Evening Standard

Review:

Dizzyingly good and so clever that it makes you want to dance (New Statesman)

A delight. A masterpiece. Magical. (Sunday Times)

I take my hat off to Ali Smith. Her writing lifts the soul (Evening Standard)

Exciting, full of joy and wryly funny... [Ali Smith is] one of the most inventive writers alive (Emerald Street)

A remarkably easy and immensely enjoyable read... Ali Smith is a one-off. Her imagination and originality make her one of the most exciting novelists of her generation. Both George and Francesco touch the heart and linger in the mind long after the final page. (Daily Express)

Smith is the brightest spark in a recent explosion of female novelists taking dizzying risks with form and voice . . . most contemporary male authors feel Jurassic by comparison. (Metro)

Rich, funny and moving. Smith's writing really catches fire (Financial Times)

Dazzling (Independent)

This warm, funny book deserves to be read at least one-and-a-half times (Honor Clerk Spectator)

Radical, dazzling . . . Those writers making doomy predictions about the death of the novel should read Smith's re-imagined novel/s, and take note of the life it contains (Independent)

About the Author:

Ali Smith is the author of Free Love and Other Stories, Like, Other Stories and Other Stories, Hotel World, The Whole Story and Other Stories, The Accidental, Girl Meets Boy, The First Person and Other Stories, There but for the, Artful, How to be both, Public library and other stories and Autumn. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize and The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Folio Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.