How to be Both

Wildly inventive . . . lyrical, fresh * Bustle Magazine * A unique conversation between past and present * Milwaukee Journal * Approaches the world as only a novel can. The book moves not so much in a straight line as in a twisting helix pattern . . . delivers the heat of life and the return of beauty in the face of loss -- Kenneth Miller * Everyday Ebook * Having read this now twice, in both directions so to speak, I've decided - and I do not write this flippantly - that Ali Smith is a genius -- Susan McCallum * LA Review of Books * Brilliant . . . the sort of death-defying storytelling acrobatics that don't seem entirely possible * Washington Post * Dizzyingly ambitious . . . endlessly artful, creating work that feels infinite in its scope and intimate at the same time. [A] swirling panoramic * Atlantic * Ingeniously conceived, gloriously inventive * NPR * Ali Smith is a master of language. Vigorous, vivid writing that is Ali Smith incarnate -- Alice Thompson * Herald * One of the most intelligent, inventive, downright impressive writers working anywhere in the world today. In Ali Smith we have a writer whose dazzling sophistication will surely be celebrated, studied and argues over hundreds of years after we're gone -- Nick Barley * The Scotsman * Brilliant. No one combines experimentalism and soulfulness like Ali Smith -- Craig Taylor * Observer * Ali Smith's novels soar higher every time and How to be both doesn't disappoint -- Julie Myerson * Observer * A revelation. It blasts the doors open for the novel form and in a Woolf-like way makes all things possible. I imagine it will be one of those rare books that changes the way writers write novels -- Jackie Kay * Observer * A marvellous exploration of what it means to look, then look again. Spiralling and twisting stories suggest the ways in which we can transcend walls and barriers - not only between people but between emotions, art forms and historical periods. It is a jeu d'esprit about a girl coming of age and coming to terms with her mother's death, a ghosting of a Renaissance fresco painter in a 21st-century frame and an exhortation to do the twist. -- Sarah Churchwell * New Statesman Books of the Year 2014 * One of the things she does so well, and that is particularly evident in 'How to Be Both,' is the way she can create an extremely sophisticated, complex, multileveled novel that reads beautifully -- Erica Wagner Smith has created a stunning work that is as rewarding as it is challenging * The List * Utterly contemporary and vividly historical -- Holly Williams * The Independent * Smith's fervent, vital, incantatory prose is entirely her own . . . How to be both reads as if she has summoned words from some region of the unconscious and released them in a trance -- Joanna Kavenna * Prospect * She's a genius, genuinely modern in the heroic, glorious sense -- Alain de Botton Smith can make anything happen, which is why she is one of our most exciting writers today * Daily Telegraph * Smith is dazzling in her daring. Her inventive power pulls you through, gasping, to the final page * Observer * I was utterly transported by Ali Smith's How to Be Both, a novel built from two stories that speak across six centuries. I'm about to read it for the fourth time -- Helen Macdonald * Irish Times * Inventive, playful, compassionate. An immensely enjoyable read * Daily Express * Ms. Smith's writing is inventive and delighted. She cannot help being exuberant * New York Times * 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 * This warm, funny book deserves to be read at least one-and-a-half times -- Honor Clerk * Spectator * Dazzling * Independent * Rich, funny and moving. Smith's writing really catches fire * Financial Times * Smith is the brightest spark in a recent explosion of female novelists taking dizzying risks with form and voice .

Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of many novels, including most recently Autumn, Winter and Spring in the 'Seasonal' quartet. Her 2014 novel How to be both won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award. She has also been shortlisted once for the Orwell Prize, twice for the Orange Prize and four times for the Man Booker Prize, among many other prizes. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.