How to Be Both by Ali Smith (2014): A Review

Title: How to Be Both

Author: Ali Smith

Publication Year: 2014

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Pages: 372

Source: physical book

Genre: literary fiction, historical fiction, art, postmodern

Awards: shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize and the 2015 Folio Prize; winner of the 2014 Goldsmiths Prize, the Novel Award in the 2014 Costa Book Awards, and the 2015 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction

There are works of art that demand not only your attention, but your humility—those that leave you transfixed, both understanding and uncomprehending in equal measure. Ali Smith’s "How to be Both" is such a creation: a novel that envelops the reader in its mystery and beauty, humbling and mesmerizing all at once.

The novel unfolds across two distinct perspectives and timelines: that of Francesco del Cossa, a painter of the Italian Renaissance, and George, a contemporary English teenager whose late mother was enthralled by the artist’s work. Remarkably, "How to be Both" was published in two versions, each presenting a different narrative first, a structural decision that underscores the novel’s exploration of duality and perspective.

Smith crafts a literary equivalent to Cossa’s visual art, rendering the page as canvas and language as pigment. Her fascination with artists and the act of creation, evident also in her novel "Autumn," becomes a meditation on the nature of seeing and being seen. Though I do not claim to understand art in the traditional sense, this novel awakened in me a longing to perceive and appreciate as deeply as its characters do. Beyond its meditation on art, "How to be Both" is a study in grief, liminality, and the fluidity of identity—a challenge to binary thinking, suggesting that to be human is to occupy multiple states at once.

Yet, for all its artistry, the novel is not easily deciphered. I found myself adrift in its ambiguities, haunted by unresolved questions long after turning the final page. Much of this bewilderment arose from Francesco’s narrative—a voice both poetic and elusive. The complexity of her section humbled me, leaving me keenly aware of my own limitations as a reader. In contrast, I gravitated toward George’s story, perhaps because its emotional landscape, though no less profound, was more readily grasped.

This is a novel that demands to be revisited, its mysteries, confusions, and beauties unfolding further with each encounter.