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Challenge January 2015 - Your Plans
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By PDXReader · 27 posts · 64 views
last updated Jan 07, 2015 09:49AM
Challenge March 2016 - Your Plans
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By Dawn , Loves a Challenge · 20 posts · 44 views
last updated Feb 23, 2016 11:05AM
Challenge March 2016 – Completed Tasks
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last updated Jun 30, 2016 07:13PM
Challenge October 2016 - Your Plans
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By Dawn , Loves a Challenge · 20 posts · 41 views
last updated Sep 28, 2016 03:20AM
The Goldsmith Prize for Fiction Shortlist 2017
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By WndyJW · 1 post · 22 views
last updated Dec 25, 2017 10:17AM
Friederike's 2020 Reading Plan
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By Friederike · 13 posts · 37 views
last updated Sep 06, 2020 11:42AM
What Members Thought
I loved everything about How to be Both and having reached the end I'm left with the same delight as if I had just listened to extraordinary music. My copy of the novel had George's story first, and I'm glad. Her relationship with her mother, the things they experienced together, and the way George mourned her mother's death all gave meaning to the second half. I could imagine Francesco del Cossa's story springing from the imagination of George, as George's way of celebrating her mother's memory
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Splendid, inventive and stirring. I love Ali Smith.
My copy started with Francescho's story, but after a couple of pages tumbling around in the stream of consciousness, I decided to start with Georgie's story instead, and glad I did. What a wonderful voice Georgie has - her mother nailed it when she called Georgie 'sardonic and generous'. The story of a 16 year old girl mourning the sudden death of her mother sounds like a recipe for depressing and bleak (not my thing by a mile!) but it's not at all - Georgie and her mother are both so sharp and
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Two intertwining stories - that of Francesco del Cossa, Renaissance painter, and that of Georgia (George), a teenager who is trying to come to terms with the sudden death of her mother. The two stories can appear in either order - in my version Francesco speaks first- but they are linked through the paintings, and with a number of subtle connections that are gradually revealed.
This is an inventive and original novel, raising questions about art, gender and identity, provoked by a particular set ...more
This is an inventive and original novel, raising questions about art, gender and identity, provoked by a particular set ...more
I was not very interested in the Francesco del Cossa section, which came first in my edition. So much so that once I reached the end of that part I put the book down and didn’t pick it up again for a couple of years. I’m glad I came back to it. I immensely enjoyed the George section.
Jan 24, 2024
Camelia Rose (on hiatus)
marked it as packed-away
(Jan 2024) I tried, but just couldn't get into it. Might revisit later
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While reading Vanessa and Her Sister(Virginia Woolf), I started How to Be Both by Ali Smith, cracked open the cover, and was met with a quote from The Telegraph, “An heir to Virginia Woolf.” My copy began with the section written in stream of consciousness style similar with the feel of Woolf’s writing set in The Renaissance (copies were published with the stories in the opposite order with the present day story told first as well). I love historical fiction about art of all kinds and was drawn
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Abandoned ten pages in. I never liked Virginia Woolf's novels and went through my Calvino phase as a teenager. Perhaps I am too old for "genre-bending" work.
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Jun 08, 2015
Gill
marked it as unfinished
Jul 07, 2016
Viv JM
marked it as to-read
Mar 18, 2021
Rosana
marked it as to-read
Jul 10, 2024
Lauren
marked it as to-read
