Tower and Town, September 2022 (view the full edition)Ali Smith: Litfest Golding Speaker
Companion Piece has two stories. One is set in the early months of 2021, with the UK in the grip of the pandemic and its social and political reality. Sandy Grey, the narrator, is deep into the dark mood of the lockdown as she tries to shield herself so she can visit her father in hospital with a heart problem. The other story is set at the time of the Black Death, with an orphaned girl who becomes a skilled blacksmith. Smith cleverly links both stories - illustrating that the problems we face today were also there years ago - drawing you in with humour, her love of wordplay and puns, her quirkiness and use of riddling rhymes. It is a book like life: messy, funny, sad, beautiful and mysterious. "A story is never an answer. A story is always a question," says Sandy. Companion Piece bears her out. Virtginia Reekie |
Ali Smith is LitFest's 10th Golding Speaker with her latest novel, Companion Piece. It springs from the same source as its predecessors Autumn (2016), Winter (2017), Spring (2019) and Summer (2020), each of which was written and published close to the present day, using events that are as current as possible.