How to Be Both

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Ali Smith’s novel How to Be Both is an experiment in combining a modern coming of age narrative with a related, but also separate, historical fiction novella. The Scottish author published the book two different ways: some copies have the modern section first, featuring the story of a young woman named George who is trying to cope with the recent death of her mother; and some have the historical section first, featuring the fictional autobiography of the real historical Italian Renaissance painter Francesco del Cossa. Readers don’t know which version they will get until they open the book to start reading. The stories these two sections tell are interconnected, but the references will mean different things depending on whether they are being read “backward” or “forward.”

Although it is clearly possible – by design – to read either section of the novel first, this summary will start with George’s story and then move on to Francesco’s. Both sections are written in a stream of consciousness prose, but while George’s thoughts are precise and succinct, moving clearly between the past and the present, Francesco’s thoughts are more lyrical and disjointed – as befits a ghost trying to reconnect with the world of the living.

George is a sixteen-year-old English girl (whose full name is Georgia) who is spending New Year’s Eve thinking about her mother, who died the previous September. George is precocious and quick-witted. She and her mom used to play a lot of word games together, but now she feels bad about her sarcasm and dismissive tone. She realizes that most people grow out of their teenage selves and get a chance to apologize for how they behaved to their mothers. But for George, all that’s left is regret and rumination, as she combs through her memories of her mom and tries to ignore her dad’s increasing drinking and grief.



One of her favorite memories is a recent trip she and her mother took to Italy where they explored the Palazzo Schifanoia in the town of Ferrara. In this Renaissance palace, George’s mother is deeply interested in the frescoes painted by the fifteenth-century painter Francesco del Cossa. Although at the time George was entirely indifferent to history or art – and in general was acting like a bratty teenager – she now remembers everything that her mother told her about the artist and his works. One idea in particular sticks in her mind: because artists would often paint over their frescoes, it is possible to find older art underneath newer works. George finds it comforting to think that the study of history means that things are never really truly gone.

In thinking about death, George runs into the paradox that her mother can both be gone, and also not gone – since she lives on in her daughter’s thoughts. This contemplation leads her to conclude that the dead must not lose their own memories either, although only her friend Helena allows that this is possible. When she is assigned a project in school, George starts researching the work of Francesco del Cossa more, fascinated by the transformations frequently portrayed in his paintings. At the same time, she forms a more adult understanding of her mother, who was both a loving parent and a famous anarchist presence online.

We then switch to the story of Francesco, who has returned from heaven to be near George. Francesco is confused about this assignment – is a punishment for painting a portrait of an old un-crucified Christ? In trying to understand George, Francesco finds his own memories coming back. Raised by a loving father and mother, as a child Francesco learns to see the true essences of things, which are not always the same as their outward appearances. A self-taught painter, Francesco puts this understanding of this internal nature into art.



We also learn that Francesco is actually a woman – when she is a girl, her father realizes that her artistic talent will never be fully realized unless she binds her breasts and pretends to be a man. This duality is mentioned obliquely, but there is a funny subplot where Francesco goes to a brothel with her/his best friend. When all the workingwomen request to be with Francesco, this friend assumes that Francesco’s sexual prowess is off the charts. The reality? Francesco has been painting portraits of the women, who are thrilled to truly be seen for the first time.

Francesco’s career thrives, and his greatest achievement is the commission to paint a fresco in the Palazzo Schifanoia for the Duke Borse alongside the more famous artist Cosimo Tura. Dwelling on this success, Francesco tries to discern the difference between memories and present-day experiences which feature a young man, or rather a young woman (actually George, who has short hair) and her mother looking at the frescos Francesco painted. Francesco feels a kinship with George, who is slowly developing the same kind of sense of the true essence and double-existence of things that Francesco had. George’s own artistic talent is expressed through photography, and Francesco recognizes a fellow traveler. Realizing this, Francesco is pulled back up to heaven.

The novel was widely praised, although several critics pointed out how much more they enjoyed George’s narrative than Francesco’s. Still, most reviewers’ opinions are well categorized by Ron Charles’s essay in The Washington Post, where he writes, “Ali Smith’s playfully brilliant…gender-blending, genre-blurring story, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, bounces across centuries, tossing off profound reflections on art and grief, without getting tangled in its own postmodern wires. It’s the sort of death-defying storytelling acrobatics that don’t seem entirely possible — How did she get here from there? — but you’ve got to be willing to hang on.”