Companion piece

The unmissable new work from Ali Smith, following the dazzling Man Booker-shortlisted Seasonal Quartet'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 quartet of Seasonal novels, Ali Smith again lights a way for us through the nightmarish now, in a vital celebration of companionship in all its forms.'Every hello, like every voice, holds its story ready, waiting.'

“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”

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 several novels and short story collections including, The Accidental, Hotel World, How to Be Both and the Seasonal Quartet. She has been four times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has won the Goldsmiths Prize, Orwell Prize, Costa Best Novel Award and the Women's Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.

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