How to Be Both by Ali Smith

How to Be Both by Ali SmithHow to be both is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double take, it's a fast moving genre bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There's a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There's the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious,

applying them in innovative ways to address pain

we rely on willpower alone

and how much pain and discomfort you can withstand along the way

Tantric Yoga teaches control of the body and its functions so that the tantrist may reach the ultimate spiritual experience

who appears as the mediator between the Devas and the Supreme Brahman

without having to live it to the end

At once triumphant and tragic

These moving stories by one of the great masters of Southern gothic portray love

women habitually suffer violence at the hands of men

And have you seen your mother’s eyes water when she cuts an onion

love at any cost

" one that defies outmoded beliefs about recovery