Tag Archives: writer: ali smith

Companion Piece, by Ali Smith

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Second paragraph of third section:

It’s comparatively quite a recent word. But like everything in language it has deep roots.

Another of Smith’s brilliant short novels, set very firmly during the latter days of COVID (it’s funny how few novels there are that use that setting), with a protagonist who finds an acquaintance from student days coming back into her life, along with complex family; and various low-stakes mysteries that need to be solved. I loved it – I think it catches a slice of our lives very well. You can get it here.

Winter, by Ali Smith

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

This is happening some time in the future,. Art is on a sofa holding a small child in his arms. The child, who has been learning to read, is sitting on Art’s knee flicking through a book pulled out at random from the bookcase next to Art’s head. It’s an old copy of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

A short but great book, about a mother and son who don’t really like each other; the mother’s sister, who doesn’t get on with her at all; and the young Croatian woman who agrees at the last moment to pretend to be the son’s girlfriend at the family Christmas gathering, the real girlfriend having dumped him and hijacked his social media accounts. There’s a lot here about family dynamics, contemporary politics, environmentalism and the Greenham Common campaigners; there’s also a bit of a riff on A Christmas Carol, not so much a rewriting of it as a reflection. I found it all pretty powerful. Recommended, perhaps especially as a Christmas present (though for people who won’t worry that there is a hidden message in your giving it to them). You can get it here.

This was both my top unread book by a woman and my top unread non-genre fiction book. Next on the first of those piles is Cart and Cwidder, by Diana Wynne Jones; next on the other is Marking Time, by Elizabeth Jane Howard,

Summer, by Ali Smith

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Second paragraph of third part:

She’s the filmmaker whose images I described earlier, the image of the men who can’t speak or hear crossing the rubble conversing with each other and the image of the man with the two suitcases at the edge of the high building.

This is the fourth in a quartet of novels by Smith (whose How to be Both I also enjoyed). I haven't read the other three; I don't think it is essential to have done so in order to enjoy Summer, though I am sure it would help. It's a story of a dysfunctional London family in 2020, with pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, comobined with flashbacks to the Second World War and an internment camp on the Isle of Man. It's possibly the first novel set in the pandemic that I have read, and I guess that means quite a lot – a clear reflection of these turbulent times, with also some invocation of the filmmaker Lorenza Mazzetti who I should find out more about. In a period where we've perforce had to live very much in the present, I felt the book both supported that feeling and helped give some historical perspective. Recommended. You can get it here.

This was my top book acquired last year, and my top un-read non-genre book. Next on those piles, respectively, are Calvin, by F. Bruce Gordon, and Beautiful World, Where Are You, by Sally Rooney.

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How To Be Both, by Ali Smith

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Second paragraph of third section, 21st century:

Cossa, George said.

Second paragraph of third section, 15th century:

Now, he said. This cup here has the Water of Forgetting in it. This cup here has the Water of Remembering. First you drink this. Then you wait a little. Then you drink the other.

One of those prize-winning books from a few years back that I have only now got around to reading. Not a lot to say about it, except that I enjoyed it. It comes in two halves, one about a girl in contemporary Cambridge whose mother has recently died, and who has become obsessed with the portrait of Saint Vincent Ferrer by Francesco del Cossa, and the other about del Cossa who turns out (in this narrative) to have been a woman passing as a man in Renaissance Italy. The two stories echo into each other, and it was a satisfying read. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2018. Next on that pile is Normal People, by Sally Rooney.