Be Specific About Epithetical Books How to Be Both
| Title | : | How to Be Both |
| Author | : | Ali Smith |
| Book Format | : | Kindle Edition |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 376 pages |
| Published | : | September 4th 2014 by Penguin (first published August 28th 2014) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Contemporary. Art. Literary Fiction |
Ali Smith
Kindle Edition | Pages: 376 pages Rating: 3.65 | 17409 Users | 2259 Reviews
Explanation Toward Books How to Be Both
Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith’s novels are like nothing else. A true original, she is a one-of-a-kind literary sensation. Her novels consistently attract serious acclaim and discussion—and have won her a dedicated readership who are drawn again and again to the warmth, humanity and humor of her voice.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.
A NOTE TO THE READER:
Who says stories reach everybody in the same order?
This novel can be read in two ways and this book provides you with both.
In half of all printed editions of the novel the narrative EYES comes before CAMERA.
In the other half of printed editions the narrative CAMERA precedes EYES.
The narratives are exactly the same in both versions, just in a different order.
The books are intentionally printed in two different ways, so that readers can randomly have different experiences reading the same text. So, depending on which edition you happen to receive, the book will be: EYES, CAMERA, or CAMERA, EYES. Enjoy the adventure.
Itemize Books To How to Be Both
| Original Title: | How to Be Both ASIN B00IPXLLO8 |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Booker Prize Nominee (2014), Costa Book Award for Novel (2014), Women's Prize for Fiction (2015), Specsavers National Book Award Nominee for UK Author of the Year (2014), Goldsmiths Prize (2014) Saltire Society Literary Award for Literary Book (2014), Rathbones Folio Prize Nominee (2015) |
Rating Epithetical Books How to Be Both
Ratings: 3.65 From 17409 Users | 2259 ReviewsWeigh Up Epithetical Books How to Be Both
...beauty in its most completeness is never found in a single body but is something shared instead between more than one body Ali Smith upends the standard binary worldview in this gorgeous, complex, postmodern creation. It's a rare book that leaves me weeping at the end, but this is a rare read, indeed. At once playful and melancholic, absurd and achingly real, How To Be Both transcends boundaries of past and present, life and death, perception and realitynot to mention plot and charactertoAli Smiths playfully brilliant new novel makes me both excited and wary of recommending it. This gender-blending, genre-blurring story, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, bounces across centuries, tossing off profound reflections on art and grief, without getting tangled in its own postmodern wires. Its the sort of death-defying storytelling acrobatics that dont seem entirely possible How did she get here from there? but youve got to be willing to hang on.The games start even before
You could say the muse of this novel is Virginia Woolfs Orlando. The mischievous, time travelling, gender crossing spirit of history who breaks down boundaries, reconciles opposites, defies death. I read the Francesco narrative first. Francesco is based on the real life painter Francesco del Cossa (who I had never heard of). The fresco which features large in this novel is a stunning piece of oddball invention and even if Id hated this novel Id be grateful to Smith for introducing me to it:
How to be both contains two stories, one (Eyes) about a fifteenth-century artist, Francesco del Cossa, and one (Camera) about a modern-day teenage girl, George, designed to be read in whatever order the reader desires. The ebook edition I read had Eyes first (or you can skip to the middle and read Camera first, as the stories mirror each other, while the order of the sections is randomised in physical copies). I was pleased about this - Eyes may be a bit harder to get into, but it's
The Hand that Draws the HandAli Smith has produced the literary equivalent of that Escher print of a hand drawing the hand that is drawing it. In art terms, her novel would be a diptych: two panels of equal size, with different subjects, but intended to be seen side by side. In her case, two stories from different centuries that comment on each other, reflect each other, and (in that Escher twist) at times even write each other. The first half in my edition* is in the voice of a 15th-century
This experimental novel is challenging, but if you can give it your attention, it is wondrous.The novel has two parts: One part tells the story of George (full name Georgia), a teenage girl who is trying to cope with the sudden death of her mother. The other part tells the story of Francesco del Cossa, who was a real-life Italian artist during the Renaissance. The two narratives are linked because George and her mother had gone to Italy to see a fresco painted by del Cossa, and it turned out to
Well, I tried. It won the Booker Prize and had loads of rave reviews, so it must be good, right? Well I read the first half (about George) and it was okay maybe, with reservations because of the odd & difficult-to-understand word usage/style. Then I started the second section and decided that life is just too short and I have way too many books on my "To Read" list anyway. Perhaps Ali Smith is an amazing writer who's invented a totally new way to write a novel, but it sure didn't touch me.
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