Scottish novelist Ali Smith received a multitude of plaudits for her 2014 novel How to Be Both, with critical acclaim and a slew of awards and nominations, including the prestigious Man Booker Prize, for which she was nominated in 2014, and the Goldsmith's Prize, which she won in the same year.
The novel tells two stories simultaneously, and has two protagonists, who at first glance would seem to have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common; George is a sixteen year old girl who lives in present-day Cambridge, and Francesco is an Italian Renaissance artist who has painted a series of frescoes in the Hall of Months at the Palazzo Schifanoia. The book was published in two different versions, one which told George's story first, the other telling Francesco's.
George once visited the frescoes with her mother, a paranoid woman who believed she was being monitored by the government. George inherits this conviction, and after her mother's death becomes obsessed with the enigmatic Renaissance artist that they spent many hours looking at together. Francesco is having strange dreams that are causing her to consider the nature of her relationships with people during her life, particularly those who are not what they appear to be.
Many snippets of the author appear in the novel; for example, Smith herself lives in Cambridge, also the home of the fictional George. She has also lectured extensively on the art and literature of the Renaissance.
