Companion piece
The new novel from the Booker-shortlisted author of How to be both
Published on 7. April 2022
Book
Hardback
240 pages
978-0-241-54134-0 (ISBN)
Description
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
The unmissable new work from Ali Smith, following the dazzling Man Booker-shortlisted Seasonal quartet
One day in post-Brexit, mid-pandemic Britain, artist Sandy Gray receives an unexpected phone call from university acquaintance Martina Pelf. Martina is calling Sandy to ask for help with a mysterious question she's been left with after she's spent half a day locked in a room by border control officials for no reason she can fathom:
'Curlew or curfew? You choose.'
And what's any of this got to do with the story of a young and talented blacksmith hounded from her trade and her home more than five hundred years ago?
Ali Smith's novel takes wing, soaring between our atomised present and our medieval past in the hope we can open our locked down homes and selves to all the other times, other species, other histories, other possibilities.
'[An] entertaining and expert portrayal of the world we live in, seen by the most beguiling and likeable of novelistic intelligences' Telegraph
'[Companion Piece] makes you look at the world afresh. For me, it turned a cold and depressing day into a bright one' New Statesman
LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2022
The unmissable new work from Ali Smith, following the dazzling Man Booker-shortlisted Seasonal quartet
One day in post-Brexit, mid-pandemic Britain, artist Sandy Gray receives an unexpected phone call from university acquaintance Martina Pelf. Martina is calling Sandy to ask for help with a mysterious question she's been left with after she's spent half a day locked in a room by border control officials for no reason she can fathom:
'Curlew or curfew? You choose.'
And what's any of this got to do with the story of a young and talented blacksmith hounded from her trade and her home more than five hundred years ago?
Ali Smith's novel takes wing, soaring between our atomised present and our medieval past in the hope we can open our locked down homes and selves to all the other times, other species, other histories, other possibilities.
'[An] entertaining and expert portrayal of the world we live in, seen by the most beguiling and likeable of novelistic intelligences' Telegraph
'[Companion Piece] makes you look at the world afresh. For me, it turned a cold and depressing day into a bright one' New Statesman
LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2022
Reviews / Votes
Superb, radical, remarkable -- Mohsin Hamid * New York Times * A lockdown story of wayward genius . . . Lyrical visions alternate with fables and farce, history with Covid, in the scheme-busting fifth part of Smith's seasonal quartet -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett * Guardian * Scintillating . . . Companion Piece, like life, is messy, funny, sad, beautiful and mysterious -- Alex Preston * Observer * Both a standalone novel and a coda to her Seasonal quartet, Ali Smith's latest, set during the pandemic, offers a wise and humane voice for perilous times * Financial Times * Smith's way of telling a story - looping in time; switching from one fast-flicking consciousness to another; tying up radically different periods of history in a single place - and her amused delight in the flexibilities of language feel not only modernist but, better than that, modern * The New Statesman * Alive to the music and light of language * Washington Post * Smith's work is brainy and moving, thoughtful and playful * NPR * Like Smith's other novels, Companion piece is a formally dazzling story, constructed from a decoupage of funny, messy, beautifully disparate elements * Esquire * It is remarkable to be alive at the same time as Scottish writer Ali Smith . . . Smith is intellectually rigorous yet democratic, warm and - crucially - playful * Los Angeles Times *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 218 mm
Width: 138 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
360 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-241-54134-0 (9780241541340)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
04/2022
1st Edition
Penguin Books Ltd
€8.99
Available for download
Person
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of several novels and short story collections including, The Accidental, Hotel World, How to Be Both and the Seasonal Quartet. She has been four times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has won the Goldsmiths Prize, Orwell Prize, Costa Best Novel Award and the Women's Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.