Call number
FIC SMI
Collection
Genres
Publication
Pantheon (2022), 240 pages
Description
"From the Man Booker Prize shortlisted-author of the brilliant Seasonal Quartet series-a major new novel that promises to capture the present moment with Ali Smith's genius and bold spirit. "A story is never an answer. A story is always a question." Here we are in extraordinary times. Is this history? What happens when we cease to trust governments, the media, each other? What have we lost? What stays with us? What does it take to unlock our future? Following her astonishing Seasonal Quartet, Ali Smith again lights a way for us through the nightmarish now, in a vital celebration of companionship in all its timeless and contemporary, legendary and unpindownable, spellbinding and shapeshifting forms. Companion Piece stands apart from the Quartet, which remains discrete unto itself. But like Smith's groundbreaking series, this new novel boldly captures the spirit of the times. "Every hello, like every voice, holds its story ready, waiting.""--… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member lisapeet
I just gobbled this one up. It’s super cerebral and full of puzzles and threads to tease out—the kind of book you can think about for a while after finishing. The plot is minimal: a 50-60ish painter who lives alone is contacted by an old grad school acquaintance, Martina, about an experience
It’s surreal and yet makes sense if you read carefully. As the middle of the three chapters makes clear, everything in the book is some kind of binary (there is a nonbinary character, one of twins—a bit of wordplay in itself): there are the plague/Covid eras, the aforementioned twins, and the contrast of artistry/craftsmanship vs. the superficiality of Gen-Z mores and speech. If this is Smith’s Covid-era “kids-these-days” indulgence it’s a fun one, though I found the craziness of the two daughters a bit more heavy-handed than the rest of her storyline. To balance that out is a surprisingly sweet and very apropos through line of kindness, how being decent to people and forging connection is problematic, yes, but also necessary, and that being kind to animals is an unambiguous good and will always serve you well in life.
Show More
she had while in a stressful situation, hearing voices that said “Curfew or Curlew. You choose.” Martina remembers the narrator, aptly named Sandy Gray, as being a clever interpreter—in grad school, of an e.e. cummings poem—and thinks she can help. The narrative then spirals out of linear form—there’s an intersecting story line of a 16th-century Black Death–era young woman metalworker; Sandy’s father, whose hospital stay for a heart attack is complicated by Covid restrictions; and Martina’s two very weird 20-something daughters, who muscle their way into Sandy’s house and life.It’s surreal and yet makes sense if you read carefully. As the middle of the three chapters makes clear, everything in the book is some kind of binary (there is a nonbinary character, one of twins—a bit of wordplay in itself): there are the plague/Covid eras, the aforementioned twins, and the contrast of artistry/craftsmanship vs. the superficiality of Gen-Z mores and speech. If this is Smith’s Covid-era “kids-these-days” indulgence it’s a fun one, though I found the craziness of the two daughters a bit more heavy-handed than the rest of her storyline. To balance that out is a surprisingly sweet and very apropos through line of kindness, how being decent to people and forging connection is problematic, yes, but also necessary, and that being kind to animals is an unambiguous good and will always serve you well in life.
Show Less
LibraryThing member thorold
The trouble with using a title like "Seasonal Quartet" is that you pretty much have to stop after the fourth book, even if it's working astonishingly well (unless you're Douglas Adams). But of course there's nothing to stop you writing a kind of appendix that isn't actually named after a season of
This isn't part of the Seasonal Quartet, then, and the characters and action don't overlap, but it's unmistakably using the same techniques and exploring the same kind of ideas about all those hideous things in present day life we spend most of our time pretending not to see. And about the power of stories and the arts to fight back, even if only quixotically.
Taking her cue from an e.e. cummings poem, Smith uses a kind of two-steps-backward-one-step-forward narrative sequence, which is disorienting at first but very effective, and she also sets up an unexpected crossover between Tudor and Lockdown England, bringing out parallels in the authoritarianism, intolerance and oppression of the poor going on in both periods — something like what she did in How to be both. The artist and poet Sand is isolating herself at home whilst her elderly father is in hospital not-with-the-virus, but she reckons without the prime pest of her student days, Martina Pelf née Inglis, who rings her up out of the blue with an odd question about curlews and curfews. And then she finds a female blacksmith with a curlew on her shoulder trying on her shoes, and things start getting quite confusing.
As usual, wonderful, clever, witty writing, making us question things that always seemed quite normal and reasonable, and suggesting wonderful subversive possibilities in the world around us, awful though it is at the moment.
Show More
the year...This isn't part of the Seasonal Quartet, then, and the characters and action don't overlap, but it's unmistakably using the same techniques and exploring the same kind of ideas about all those hideous things in present day life we spend most of our time pretending not to see. And about the power of stories and the arts to fight back, even if only quixotically.
Taking her cue from an e.e. cummings poem, Smith uses a kind of two-steps-backward-one-step-forward narrative sequence, which is disorienting at first but very effective, and she also sets up an unexpected crossover between Tudor and Lockdown England, bringing out parallels in the authoritarianism, intolerance and oppression of the poor going on in both periods — something like what she did in How to be both. The artist and poet Sand is isolating herself at home whilst her elderly father is in hospital not-with-the-virus, but she reckons without the prime pest of her student days, Martina Pelf née Inglis, who rings her up out of the blue with an odd question about curlews and curfews. And then she finds a female blacksmith with a curlew on her shoulder trying on her shoes, and things start getting quite confusing.
As usual, wonderful, clever, witty writing, making us question things that always seemed quite normal and reasonable, and suggesting wonderful subversive possibilities in the world around us, awful though it is at the moment.
Show Less
LibraryThing member nancyadair
She stepped into the woods and in thirty seconds was lost. It would be dusk soon. The trees creaked in the wind, birds fluttered in the new greening leaves. “What I sensed, clear as unruined air, was the ghost of a chance, a different presence.”
It is 2021 and Sandy’s father is hospitalized
I remember those days, spring of 2021, when we took wide arcs around people we encountered. When I walked to the park and avoided the children playing there. We stayed at home, masked to greet the delivery people at the door.
Like millions of people, Sandy experienced life as a kind of limbo, a stasis, as if lost in a forest where one sits and waits to be found.
An unexpected phone call from a woman who was less than an acquaintance in college engenders a series of strange events. The woman has a story to tell, hoping that Sandy can dissect its meaning the way she dissected a poem in college.
Isn’t that what we all want? To understand this strange, disorienting world? Hoping that a writer or artist or musician or therapist or doctor can name what ails us, connect the dots for us?
People force their way into Sandy’s house, bringing threat of infection while asking for her help, burglars and teenagers escaping the closed circuit of home. Laura can’t take the infection to her father and tries to send them away.
Meanwhile in the past, a young woman smithy, a plague survivor, now an illegal vagrant, endeavors to find a safe haven in the world. She perhaps will create a marvelous clock that will outlast her.
Companion Piece is a story to reread, each reading a richer experience, Ali Smith touches on so many things. She leaves us with Sandy walking her father’s dog across a common where plague victims were buried hundreds of years ago, observing nature. She meets a woman who recognizes the dog, asks about her father, and sends her ‘hello’ to him. It is an ending that envelopes with warmth. Perhaps a simple greeting between two people is enough. We are lost in the woods, but we are in it together.
I received a free book from the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased.
It is 2021 and Sandy’s father is hospitalized
Show More
with a heart problem. Covid restrictions are in place and she is social isolating, unable to be with her father. Life has been reduced to an endless suspension, a freezing of spirit. She takes a walk she often enjoyed with her father. Then, stepped off the path.I remember those days, spring of 2021, when we took wide arcs around people we encountered. When I walked to the park and avoided the children playing there. We stayed at home, masked to greet the delivery people at the door.
Like millions of people, Sandy experienced life as a kind of limbo, a stasis, as if lost in a forest where one sits and waits to be found.
An unexpected phone call from a woman who was less than an acquaintance in college engenders a series of strange events. The woman has a story to tell, hoping that Sandy can dissect its meaning the way she dissected a poem in college.
Isn’t that what we all want? To understand this strange, disorienting world? Hoping that a writer or artist or musician or therapist or doctor can name what ails us, connect the dots for us?
People force their way into Sandy’s house, bringing threat of infection while asking for her help, burglars and teenagers escaping the closed circuit of home. Laura can’t take the infection to her father and tries to send them away.
Meanwhile in the past, a young woman smithy, a plague survivor, now an illegal vagrant, endeavors to find a safe haven in the world. She perhaps will create a marvelous clock that will outlast her.
Companion Piece is a story to reread, each reading a richer experience, Ali Smith touches on so many things. She leaves us with Sandy walking her father’s dog across a common where plague victims were buried hundreds of years ago, observing nature. She meets a woman who recognizes the dog, asks about her father, and sends her ‘hello’ to him. It is an ending that envelopes with warmth. Perhaps a simple greeting between two people is enough. We are lost in the woods, but we are in it together.
I received a free book from the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Cariola
I can't say how much I loved this book, and I want to read it again before too long. The main character, an artist names Sandy whose paintings are based on poems (they actually include the words of the poems underneath the paint), receives an unexpected call from a former classmate that she barely
Strange things keep happening, although Sandy seems to take it all pretty much in stride. At one point, she comes home to find a disheveled, battered girl with an odd manner of speaking and an odd-looking bird companion ransacking her closet, looking for a pair of shoes. She becomes the link between Martina's story and Sandy's own.
This is a book for readers who love words, not just plots. Smith loves to play with words, and it takes a bit of concentration to play along, but it's definitely worth the effort. The novel is like a puzzle, and it's a joy to work it out. Along the way, we're given keen insights into art, artists and artisans; politics and society; loneliness v. solitude; and much, much more. Can't wait to pick it up and read it again, but I need to let it settle for a bit first.
Show More
remembers. What Martina remembers about Sandy is that she was always good at analyzing poetry and stories, and Martina has a story for her. Martina works for a museum and was stopped by security while transporting a medieval lock. While waiting seven hours for her release, she heard a voice that asked "Curfew or curlew?" This is the riddle that she hopes Sandy can solve for her. Martina becomes obsessed with the story that Sandy tells her--so obsessed that she ignores her family, and her twins invade Sandy's home, bent on discovering what has happened to their mother. The UK is in the midst of COVID, just released from lockdown and other restrictions, and Sandy is still being extremely careful because her father is in the hospital after suffering a heart attack. But the Pelf twins seem to believe that they are invincible and that COVID is completely gone.Strange things keep happening, although Sandy seems to take it all pretty much in stride. At one point, she comes home to find a disheveled, battered girl with an odd manner of speaking and an odd-looking bird companion ransacking her closet, looking for a pair of shoes. She becomes the link between Martina's story and Sandy's own.
This is a book for readers who love words, not just plots. Smith loves to play with words, and it takes a bit of concentration to play along, but it's definitely worth the effort. The novel is like a puzzle, and it's a joy to work it out. Along the way, we're given keen insights into art, artists and artisans; politics and society; loneliness v. solitude; and much, much more. Can't wait to pick it up and read it again, but I need to let it settle for a bit first.
Show Less
LibraryThing member CarltonC
Storytelling. Jump straight in, the variation is familiar, anonymous officialdom and borders, wordplay and playfulness, changing time frames, accidentals and historical tales.
That was life. Everything suspect. Nothing uncorrupt.
Fun and engaging, as ever.
That was life. Everything suspect. Nothing uncorrupt.
Fun and engaging, as ever.
LibraryThing member dianeham
Parts of this book were very confusing and I may need to read it again to understand how the different parts fit together. Despite that, I really liked it in the end.
LibraryThing member japaul22
I loved this new novel by Ali Smith. Sometimes her writing is a bit too experimental for me to connect with, but this one hit just the right balance. Set in 2021 in England, the pandemic is still a concern for our narrator, but a lot of the world has moved on. Sandy's father is in the hospital
Somehow, this totally works. Running through the whole book is a love of words and poetry that matters more than the actual plot. It's a book I devoured and now really want to reread sometime soon to savor.
It's odd, I can't say I really understood the point of all of it, and it won't be for everyone, but it really worked for me.
Show More
recovering, hopefully, from a heart attack, and Sandy gets a strange call from a woman she briefly knew in college. The woman, Martina, relates an odd experience she had recently which sets the novel off in two different directions: one the current day family drama of this friend and her young adult daughters, and two the story of a young girl blacksmith during the Plague years in the Middle Ages. All this is based around a sentence Martina heard - "curlew or curfew - you choose" - and couldn't understand. Sandy was always known for being quirky and understanding words and poetry in college, so Martina seeks her out for an explanation. Somehow, this totally works. Running through the whole book is a love of words and poetry that matters more than the actual plot. It's a book I devoured and now really want to reread sometime soon to savor.
It's odd, I can't say I really understood the point of all of it, and it won't be for everyone, but it really worked for me.
Show Less
LibraryThing member xlsg
Interesting style. Set in the COVID era. Some steam of consciousness some story telling lots left unsaid.
LibraryThing member steve02476
Wow. Love her writing, even though I often can’t figure out the overall flow of the book. Her wordplay is wonderful, sort of puns I guess but very thoughtful and thought-provoking. She really doesn’t like rich and powerful people, it gets a bit venomous sometimes, but she seems to love everyone
Show More
else, or at least find them amusing. Show Less
LibraryThing member Castlelass
Sandy is an artist whose paintings are based on poetry. Her father has had a heart attack and is hospitalized during the Covid pandemic. She gets a call from Martina, an acquaintance from college, who tells her of a strange experience involving an overheard phrase. She asks for Sandy’s help in
There are three primary storylines – one set in present-day England concerning Sandy’s family, another about Martina and her young adult daughters, and a third of a female blacksmith during the plague years. These three stories come together through common themes: art, socio-political commentary, and isolation.
Do not read this book for the plot. Read it for Smith’s playful writing style, and for the mental puzzle at the heart of the story. It can get a little convoluted at times, but I enjoyed looking for linkages among stories. It is atmospheric and communicates its messages with subtlety. Very few authors could pull off this bizarre mix of topics and create any sort of cohesive work. Smith’s writing continues to impress me.
Show More
deciphering the words. There are three primary storylines – one set in present-day England concerning Sandy’s family, another about Martina and her young adult daughters, and a third of a female blacksmith during the plague years. These three stories come together through common themes: art, socio-political commentary, and isolation.
Do not read this book for the plot. Read it for Smith’s playful writing style, and for the mental puzzle at the heart of the story. It can get a little convoluted at times, but I enjoyed looking for linkages among stories. It is atmospheric and communicates its messages with subtlety. Very few authors could pull off this bizarre mix of topics and create any sort of cohesive work. Smith’s writing continues to impress me.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Gwendydd
This is a delightfully bizarre book about a woman whose father is in the hospital with covid, and she is trying to cope with his hospitalization and continue her work as a painter, but people keep intruding on her life: an old grad school acquaintance calls her to relate a strange story, and then
Show More
that woman's children show up at her door to accuse her of taking their mother away from them. While coping with all of this, this narrator thinks back to memories of growing up with her father and absentee mother, and this eventually leads to a story of a blacksmith girl in medieval England. The book is very strange and unstructured, yet there is a delightful thread of wordplay throughout that ties it all together in surprising ways. It manages to capture the strange sense of existing outside of the constraints of time and logic that happened during the worst of the covid pandemic. Show Less
LibraryThing member RandyMetcalfe
Ali Smith writes so fluidly and with such verve that perhaps it’s natural for her to take on the immediacy of her situation in her writing. Not that she doesn’t tie the present to the past or even the distant past. Here, Covid restrictions link to abstruse border controls and other, more
Smith’s writing can feel utterly up to the minute as well being a bit timeless. It is always a pleasure to read her and an equal pleasure to recommend her to others.
Recommended.
Show More
ancient, forms of control. And while there are markers of belonging in the present, there are also even more insidious markings of dis-belonging in the past. And also, not surprisingly, there are stories within stories.Smith’s writing can feel utterly up to the minute as well being a bit timeless. It is always a pleasure to read her and an equal pleasure to recommend her to others.
Recommended.
Show Less
LibraryThing member srfudji
The title of this novel is "Companion piece"
Whoever it is who keeps adding additional text to the title in this case - the new novel from the Booker-shortlisted author of How To Be Both by
it is not needed, not helpful and not clever. Just stop it.
Whoever it is who keeps adding additional text to the title in this case - the new novel from the Booker-shortlisted author of How To Be Both by
it is not needed, not helpful and not clever. Just stop it.
LibraryThing member ccayne
Beautifully written, mixing medieval past with the present in a strangely cohesive way.
Awards
Gordon Burn Prize (Longlist — 2022)
BookTube Prize (Octofinalist — Fiction — 2023)
NPR: Books We Love (2022)
The New York Times Notable Books of the Year (Fiction/Poetry — 2022)
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults (Selection — 2022)
Pages
240
ISBN
0593316371 / 9780593316375
Similar in this library
Trust by Hernan Diaz