Companion piece by Ali Smith

Companion piece by Ali Smith

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

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 découpage 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 *

Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of Spring, Winter, Autumn, Public library and other stories, How to be both, Shire, Artful, There but for the, The first person and other stories, Girl Meets Boy, The Accidental, The whole story and other stories, Hotel World, Other stories and other stories, Like and Free Love. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Bailey's Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Autumn was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017 and Winter was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2018. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780241541357
ISBN 10	0241541352
Title	Companion piece
Author	Ali Smith
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Penguin Books Ltd
Year published	2022-04-07
Number of pages	240
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.