How to Be Both (Smith)

Book Reviews
Extraordinary.... Warm, funny, subtle, layered, intelligent.... Brilliant.
Spectator (UK)
 

Exuberant, rhapsodic.... Dizzyingly good and so clever that it makes you want to dance.
New Statesman (UK)
 

Dazzling indeed.... Smith has written a radical novel, one that becomes two novels, with discrete meanings . . . 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 (UK)
 

[A] rich, strong and moving novel.... Ingenious.... A triumph.
Financial Times (UK)
 

Immensely enjoyable.... Inventive and playful, compassionate and sagacious.... Explores the injustices of life but also its delights, including the pleasures of art and the redemptive power of love.
Express (UK)
 

An heir to Virginia Woolf, Ali Smith subtly but surely reinvents the novel.... How to Be Both brims with palpable joy, not only at language, literature and art’s transformative power but at the messy business of being human, of wanting to be more than one kind of person at once.
Telegraph (UK)


(Starred review.) British author Smith...a playful, highly imaginative literary iconoclast, surpasses her previous efforts in this inventive double novel that deals with gender issues, moral questions, the mystery of death, the value of art, the mutability of time.... Two books coexist under the same title, each presenting largely the same material arranged differently...a provocative reevaluation of the form.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) This adventurous, entertaining writer offers two distinctive takes on youth, art and death—and even two different editions of the book.... Both are remarkable depictions of the treasures of memory and the rich perceptions and creativity of youth, of how we see what's around us and within us. Comical, insightful and clever, Smith builds a thoughtful fun house with her many dualities.
Kirkus Reviews