Ali Smith’s How To Be Both: Book club and discussion.

Can We Live With the Unsolved Mysteries in Ali Smith’s Twisty, Elusive Novel?

Can We Live With the Unsolved Mysteries in Ali Smith’s Twisty, Elusive Novel?

Slate
The Audio Book Club
Discussing new and classic works.
April 10 2015 11:18 AM

The Audio Book Club Learns How to Be Both

Slate critics debate Ali Smith’s double helix of a novel.

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To listen to the Audio Book Club discussion of How To Be Both, click the arrow on the player below.

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This month, Slate critics Emily Bazelon, Hanna Rosin, and Katy Waldman dig into Ali Smith’s complex, baffling, and bewitching novel, How to Be Both. Are the twinned narratives—about a prickly teenager and a Renaissance painter—effective or gimmicky? Should we be consoled or creeped out by the idea of a voyeurism-powered universe? And is it more satisfying when books resolve their mysteries, or leave them hanging?

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Next month the Audio Book Club will try to tame Helen Macdonald’s genre-defying H Is for Hawk. Read the book and stay tuned for our discussion in May!

Visit our Audio Book Club archive page for a complete list of the more than 75 books we’ve discussed over the years. Or you can listen to any of our previous club meetings through our iTunes feed.

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