Book Group

Ali Smith recently won the Goldsmiths prize for innovation in fiction with this novel, and narrowly missed winning the Booker itself. How to be Both tells the intertwined stories of a present day 15 year old girl trying to get over the death of her mother and a 15th century painter called Francesco del Cossa.

It's simultaneously one and two stories, now and then, him and her. It's very clever and very evocative. I'm now determined to visit Francesco del Cossa's painting in the National Gallery, and one day to see his frescos in the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrera...