Read Women discussion

This is our discussion thread for our November group read and discussion of Scotland-born, Cambridge-based Ali Smith's 6th novel, How to Be Both.

Synopsis

From the Guardian review linked below: "How to Be Both is not a multi-choice narrative, but the textual order depends on an element of chance. The book has two interconnected stories. There is a teenage girl called George whose mother has just died and who is left struggling to make sense of her death with her younger brother and her emotionally disconnected father. And then there is an Italian renaissance artist, Francesco del Cossa, a real-life figure responsible for a series of striking frescoes in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, Italy. Depending on which copy you pick up at random, you will either be presented with George's story first or with Francesco's. .."

https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...

Ali Smith

Jeanette Winterson displays at her blog an interview she conducted with Ali Smith in 2004. Here's an excerpt:

...She tells me not to worry about the facts of her life – they are simple and there is no scandal. She was born in 1962, one of five children from a Scottish working-class family. She studied at Aberdeen, and then at Cambridge, for a PHD that was never finished. A stint of working as a lecturer at Strathclyde in 1990, convinced her that she could never cut it as an academic. ‘I’d stand up to lecture and I’d feel sick – physically sick.’ She gave up trying to teach other people’s work and started to do her own.

‘I’ve always written – poems – bad ones, play, good ones, I think, and that’s how I met my partner, Sarah Wood. She was an undergraduate at Cambridge, and I was doing my PhD, and there was so much money around that anyone could say, ‘hey, I’m writing a play’, and you could get it put on.’..."

http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/jour...

Isabel will lead our discussion.

Hello everybody, thanks to Carol for this rich introduction.

To start with the discussion and before entering in the heart of the matter as I guess not everybody has finished reading it, I would like to start by discussing the book cover, which I did not realise is directly linked to the book's contents. While reading, I did not exactly pay attention to it as I felt it had been chosen randomly. Then I listened the the author's presentation of the book on BBC World Book Club (you can listen to it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cs...) and realised it had been chosen on purpose to illustrate both the title and elements from the text (that I cannot disclose here for not spoiling) since the photograph displays two French singers from the sixties: Sylvie Vartan (the blond one, on the left) and Françoise Hardy (the brunette on the right). You do not need to be specialists of French music to be able to understand it (being French myself, I had not at all realised they were featured here). Here, the contrast between the two is quite obvious (their hair colour, their clothes, even their posture) and still, they seem to get along very well.

For those you might have gone further up in the reading, I was wondering if contrary to me, you had been able to link the cover to the story and whether, in general, you do pay attention to book covers and relate them to the book's story, which, I am shameful to say, I did not use to do but now, I know, I have to?

I hope everybody's enjoying the book as much as I have and I cannot wait to read your comments on this.

Isabelle wrote: " For those you might have gone further up in the reading, I was wondering if contrary to me, you had been able to link the cover to the story and whether, in general, you do pay attention to book covers and relate them to the book's story, which, I am shameful to say, I did not use to do but now, I know, I have to..."

I am planning to join this discussion but need to finish the book I am reading at the moment first.

While I do notice covers, I wouldn't say that I always gave a lot of thought to how they might be related to the book. At least, not before I read it.

I have my book and am ready to start as well, but my cover is different.

I read that there are two versions of the book in which the order of the stories is reversed, which can affect the reader's experience.

Anita wrote: "I read that there are two versions of the book in which the order of the stories is reversed, which can affect the reader's experience"

I had one version (the one that starts in the Renaissance) and my friend had the modern version and we both felt quite differently about the story. I will be interested to hear how version affects this group's interpretation. One hint--if you start with the modern section, there are two pages you might want to read aloud when you come to them. (I think you'll know them when you get to them.)

I started last night. Mine starts with the Renaissance and the stream of consciousness writing style took me a minute to get over, but the story of Francescho I absolutely adore so far. It seems like the story solidifies around the moments spent growing and learning to paint (I'm where Francescho visits brothels and ends up drawing the women), the writing becomes lucid for a little, and then fractures off again. I honestly thought it was a ghost or an angel or something... now I'm believing it's just memories. I have no idea where it will lead, but I'm interested at least. Perhaps as the memories solidify, so does the prose into something easily tangible.

I should be reading two other books, but I am instead succumbing to the temptation to start this tonight. I’m pretty certain mine starts with Francescho’s story.

I have the version which begins with George's story. At first, I thought, is this a boy talking with his mother? But, then her mother teases her by calling her George...Ah. The conversations they have are fascinating, would a teenage girl really see things the way George does?

It took me some time to catch on/remember that Francescho is female. I'm around page 120 now and looking forward to being fully embedded in George's story. Smith's writing style in this novel is taking a lot of express work for me. the use of the word "cause" for "because," without an apostrophe to indicate the missing letters, grates on my last nerve, but then I'm #TeamOxfordComma, too. It's as if I'm reading elegant YA. not that that's a bad thing, of course.

i found this short 2014 NPR interview Scott Simon did with Ali Smith. There's a transcript if you don't want to hear the audio. I found it charming and it is helping me with the literary theory piece of Smith's structure and the story she's wanting to tell.

in my view, no spoilers, but I'm often tone-deaf to spoilerization compared to other GR readers. For a reader who wants no knowledge at all of George's adult future, note that the transcript includes a broad description of her area of interest.

https://www.npr.org/2014/11/29/367362...

Writers & Company also had an excellent interview with Smith on this novel. I learned so much from it:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandco...

I find myself feeling quite sad for George. I am at the beginning of Francescho.

Story wrote: "Writers & Company also had an excellent interview with Smith on this novel. I learned so much from it:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandco..."

this is wonderful, Story. thanks for sharing it.

Carol, the overuse of the word "cause" caused me so much frustration.

@Sophie, I just finished Francescho's story last night, and started George's today. I find myself wondering who these wonderkin children are who have moral discussions with their parents. Mine start conversations with, "There was this meme..."

It's funny because I just read The Divines in which all the girls call each other by masculine nicknames, so it was really easy for me to accept these female characters with male names. It does, however, make plain how indoctrinated we are to the feminine and masculine binary - which one has to take into consideration since the author chose these names for the mc's in both stories, right?

I think I will save the articles until after, since I still have no idea how these stories will connect.

Anita wrote: "Carol, the overuse of the word "cause" caused me so much frustration.

@Sophie, I just finished Francescho's story last night, and started George's today. I find myself wondering who these wonderk..."

Well, my daughter just texted me, why are we so hung up on not having CSections, so I can't complain, but that followed a whole lot of, have you seen this meme? in all seriousness, I agree that Smith's dialogue between parents and kids reminded me of Mohsin Hamid's use of doors in Exit West -- a shortcut to avoid talking about a mechanism when he wanted to talk about the before and after. Smith isn't really interested in whether the parent-child conversations bear much resemblance to authentic dialogue; they serve merely as a mechanism for moving her plot along to the things she wants to talk about.

Anita wrote: "I find myself wondering who these wonderkin children are who have moral discussions with their parents"

I do work with some (a few) teens who have conversations (with me, their mentor) that are not unlike George's conversations. So, not impossible. I think Smith is brilliant at capturing a certain kind of effervescent, questing adolescent energy.

On a side note, I had a really great time exploring Francesco del Cossa's artwork online, and looking at the frescos and portraits described in the book. Being able to imagine a story behind the faces of the graces, the muses, the portrait of a man with a ring, and the many characters in the Allegories of March, April and May, just made looking at them a very nice experience.
I also looked at some of Cosimo Tura's (Cosmo, their mentor/teacher) work.

The details in the faces were very lovely, and seeing the feminine and masculine features swapped in many of the people really lends weight to this story. It wasn't just del Cossa either, I looked at a few of the other months and artists and found really interesting things in their paintings. I recommend you all look at them. I just Googled Francesco del Cossa and they all popped up.

A comment about the end of the renaissance portion :(view spoiler)[ at the end of the renaissance, I turned back to read the first few pages and they did make some sense. Cosmo is the old man who lay dying under one of Francescho's canvases, and we learn the canvas was her interpretation of the story of Marysas and Apollo that went missing (hide spoiler)]

Anita wrote: "On a side note, I had a really great time exploring Francesco del Cossa's artwork online, and looking at the frescos and portraits described in the book. Being able to imagine a story behind the fa..."

I am very much looking forward to going down this rabbit hole. I’m trying to hold back until this weekend but may not make it ‘til then.

I finished the book last night and am a bit conflicted. Several thoughts.

1. I am so impressed with Smith's concept and execution of two halves the order of which can be flipped and it still "works." However, I'm not persuaded that this alone means the finished novel merits all of the attention and praise it received, to say nothing of awards. If I put the mechanics aside, was the novel a success? I don't think so. I think either story would have been more interesting fleshed out into a singular powerful work, but in combination, I attended more to the scaffolding because each half was a bit thin, to me. i was particularly interested in reading 325 pages about George, H and George's mom. OTOH, I wasn't sorry to finish because this was a somewhat exhausting read due to the sudden and constant changes of topic, speakers, locations, time shifts and the like.

2. I loved this discussion and I believe I stuck with the novel because of this shared reading experience, and I'm glad I did since I hadn't read Ali Smith before and saw that as a gap. So ... yay, us.

3. If you told me the book was written by an unknown author, as opposed to one highly regarded by the literary establishment, would I say and feel the same things about it? I wouldn't. I'd give it 2 stars and move on without a glance. But because it wasn't, I keep reassessing my "meh", "interesting but unsuccessful in the end" conclusions in light of the fact that this is ALI SMITH in flashing lights. Maybe this is just another indicator that I don't belong at the cool kids' lunch table. And, I am open -- really open, because it would feel more comfortable to be in the majority - to other members' convincing me that there's something big here, particularly in terms of Smith's writing, that is more special than what I experienced.

4. Oddly, I finished this book really liking Ali Smith more than her novel, which is particularly funny because I understand that she's an author who believes that the work stands on its own and she would prefer not to have folks ask her what X means or how Y should be interpreted. Maybe I just thought that she had too many themes to be fully explored with such thin gruel. i'll have to read another of her novels to see if it's her or me.

Carol, I have been debating reading this and your comments make me think I should not. It has always sounded gimmicky to me but since it is Ali Smith, I had to assume I was wrong. I have the idea that Ali and I may not be right for each other. I read Autumn and thought it was just okay. Then I read half of Winter and dnf'd it because I was so bored. Maybe I need to be British to really get those books. Maybe you have to be one of the cool kids and I'm not. I think I will skip this one and try There But For The which I have a copy of.

I think what I really like about this book is the artwork that it's based around. Looking through the Allegories after reading Francescho's story made me really appreciate the author's efforts and passion about art, and the process of seeing these characters and imagining stories for them.
After reading George's story though (which I liked less as a story than Francescho's), I gained different appreciation for the artwork because of all of the philosophical conversations George and her mother had. I personal think that George's mother might be a literary representation of Ali Smith, at least in regards to her passion for the Allegories and those philosophical connections.
I've seen many reviews ranging for this book and I find that people seem to take away something different from it, or focus on a different "big theme," like historical fiction, or art, or grief, or gender roles. I liked all of those things about it, but I have to think that if I didn't view the art (specifically the Allegories) as the centerpiece, I wouldn't see the point of it. I spent a lot of time wondering what the connection was going to be once I finished the Renaissance portion, and I think that has led me to think more deeply about the book than I would have if I'd read it on a personal whim.
I don't know that I would have liked it as much if I had read it in reverse order though.

Carol wrote: "I finished the book last night and am a bit conflicted. Several thoughts.
I wasn't sorry to finish because this was a somewhat exhausting read due to the sudden and constant changes of topic, speakers, locations, time shifts, and the like.
@carol After I finished, I found myself going back to reread certain sections which made more sense after rereading. I agree that had it not been for the comments and observations of this group, I would not have bothered and chalked it up to a so so read.
Thank you everyone for the links to Ali Smith's interviews. Being a big fan of short stories, her observations about the form really hit the mark for me. "But if we all have the attention span of a gnat, shouldn’t short stories be big business? I ask
‘No, because they are hard’ says Smith. ‘They are closer to poetry in their demands. The easiest thing in the world is to read a blockbuster – you can skip and skim in a way that is impossible if every word counts.’"

Carol wrote: "I finished the book last night and am a bit conflicted. Several thoughts.

1. I am so impressed with Smith's concept and execution of two halves the order of which can be flipped and it still "work..."

Firstly, I'll apologise because I really wanted to participate more actively in this discussion but I've had a few distractions this month and so I am still reading this. I like to avoid spoilers so I've stayed away from the discussion but with the end of month looming I thought I should venture in.

1. I also like this idea. In my version, the Renaissance portion came first and I have to say that I'm glad that I got the story this way. There is so much reference to Francesco in the George's section of the story that I feel I would have missed something if I'd read them the other way around, or at least had to go back and re-read the George half.

I'm on a bit of a rollercoaster about whether I am impressed with the work overall and will probably wait until I am actually finished to decide on this. It does feel a little gimmicky at times. Both stories would have been interesting on their own. Although I do feel that the Renaissance portion helps to inform the George portion. It also feels like there are so many issues being addressed: gender, feminism, grief, sexuality.... Of course, life is messy like that so there is no reason to think a novel can't be messy as well.

3. I've read Ali Smith's "Girl meets Boy" so a lot of the gender issues in this work were done much better in that one.

Carol wrote: "It took me some time to catch on/remember that Francescho is female. I'm around page 120 now and looking forward to being fully embedded in George's story. Smith's writing style in this novel is ta..."

I found "cause" really irritating too.

Anita wrote: "On a side note, I had a really great time exploring Francesco del Cossa's artwork online, and looking at the frescos and portraits described in the book. Being able to imagine a story behind the fa..."

I'm looking forward to doing this once I finish.