How to Be Both Summary
Ali Smith

How to Be Both Overview

Using an inventive blend of historical novel and modern character study qualities, Ali Smith presents the novel entitled How to Be Both. In the section of the novel entitled Eyes, a sixteenth-century Italian artist dons the clothes of a boy in order to pursue her passion for painting in the patriarchal world of the Italian Renaissance. In the other half of the novel, entitled Camera, an omniscient narrator relates the story of George, a young woman living with the recent loss of her mother in the town of Cambridge, England. The ways in which the two halves of the novel interact serve as catalysts for the delivery of themes such as the interconnected nature of the universe, the acknowledgement of historical resonance, and appearance versus reality.