How to Be Both

How to Be Both is a 2014 novel by Scottish author Ali Smith, first published by Hamish Hamilton. It was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize and the 2015 Folio Prize. It won the 2014 Goldsmiths Prize, the Novel Award in the 2014 Costa Book Awards and the 2015 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.
Plot introduction.
The story is told from two perspectives: those of George, a pedantic 16-year-old girl living in contemporary Cambridge, and Francesco del Cossa, an Italian renaissance artist responsible for painting a series of frescoes in the 'Hall of the Months' at the Palazzo Schifanoia (translated as the 'Palace of Not Being Bored' in the novel) in Ferrara, Italy. Two versions of the book were published simultaneously, one in which George's story appears first, the other in which Francesco's comes first.
George.
Struggling to come to terms with the sudden death of her mother (Dr Carol Martineau Economist Journalist Internet Guerilla Interventionist – according to her obituary), George attends counselling sessions at her school. She also has to look after her younger brother, Henry, and cope with her alcoholic father. She recalls travelling with her mother to see the frescos in Ferrara and asking her about the elusive painter Francesco del Cossa. Her mother believed herself to be being monitored by the security services as a result of her subversive activities and George has inherited this belief, and becomes obsessed with Lisa Goliard a friend of her mother's with a suspicious claim to being an artist. George also becomes obsessed with Francesco and travels frequently to London to view his portrait of St. Vincent Ferrer.
Francesco.
Francesco finds his disembodied self in front of his portrait of St. Vincent Ferrer as it is being examined by what appears to be a boy. He muses on how he came to find himself in this situation, thinking back to the events in his own past life, and as he does so he becomes attached to the (apparent) boy; but people—and genders—are never what they seem to be. Or maybe they are both.
Reception.
Reviews were positive :