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She and her mom used to play a lot of word games together, but now she feels bad about her sarcasm and dismissive tone. George is a sixteen-year-old English girl (whose full name is Georgia) who is spending New Year’s Eve thinking about her mother, who died the previous September.

Both sections are written in a stream of consciousness prose, but while George’s thoughts are precise and succinct, moving clearly between the past and the present, Francesco’s thoughts are more lyrical and disjointed – as befits a ghost trying to reconnect with the world of the living. The stories these two sections tell are interconnected, but the references will mean different things depending on whether they are being read “backward” or “forward.” Although it is clearly possible – by design – to read either section of the novel first, this summary will start with George’s story and then move on to Francesco’s. Readers don’t know which version they will get until they open the book to start reading. The Scottish author published the book two different ways: some copies have the modern section first, featuring the story of a young woman named George who is trying to cope with the recent death of her mother and some have the historical section first, featuring the fictional autobiography of the real historical Italian Renaissance painter Francesco del Cossa.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Ali Smith’s novel How to Be Both is an experiment in combining a modern coming of age narrative with a related, but also separate, historical fiction novella.