A tale of twos…
Relationships at their most devastating, loss at its most joyful.
2014. I’m on the London Underground, on my way to my Contract Law lecture. It’s hot and tightly packed. I’m gripping the pole to steady myself as the tube swerves slightly. The gentleman in front of my hides his face behind a book with two women on the front, one with warm, golden-blonde hair, the other with deep, soft brown. “How To Be Both”, I think to myself, mentally noting down the book on my June TBR.
2020. Having finally, an unashamedly, got around to reading and completing How To Be Both only this month of this year, I am very pleased to say it was all I had hoped for and more. An immensely clever novel that weaves together two stories, both of a different time and location, both unassociated yet inextricably linked, Smith explores an array of themes, from gender, grief and loss, to love, belonging and identity, all through her evocative yet paired-back language and beautiful imagery.
In How To Be Both, we have George, a sixteen-year-old girl growing up in Cambridge, who has recently suffered the sudden loss of her mother, and we have Francesco, a renaissance artist in the 1460s.
The novel was published in two formats and so depending on the copy you purchase or pick up will determine which of the above stories you read first. My copy started with George’s story, which largely focuses on her memory of the trip she took with her mother to Italy, to see the Ferrara frescoes. The delicate and sacred relationship George and her mother maintain is greatly emphasised through their simple, almost mundane, conversations, in which George is paid money for uttering words her mother chooses to use in her pop-up internet advertisements. Their playful friendship is further expounded on through George’s constant correction of her mother’s grammar — this is almost a part of George’s role has her mother’s daughter.
Smith cleverly shows how we as humans cope with immense loss and grief by recreating roles of importance for ourselves — in George’s case, she is seen dancing her mother’s dance every morning, ferociously and without any particular enjoyment — in order to create some order to her new life without her mother, through adopting old habits not of her own. I appreciate Smith’s exploration of how habits and rituals can themselves create a sense of solace for us all in particularly difficult times.
Themes of sexuality and gender identity are heavily explored throughout this book — George being typically a boy’s name but in this case being the name of a girl. In Francesco’s story, we uncover a secret that is initially glossed over and masked by layers of pigments and plaster, but this I won’t spoil for you.
George also starts feeling intense emotions towards her female friend, which are never fully explored or realised, but perhaps this feeling of unfinished-ness is precisely the effect Smith was trying to achieve. As George’s story came to an end, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of loss, a deliberately-created sense of unfinished-ness. Smith’ ending of George’s story before the book ends itself, creates a sense of loss for the reader, which cleverly mirror George’s feelings towards her mother whilst at the same time mirroring the fortitude of those able to continue on with life even after tragic, unforeseen and seemingly unbearable loss.
There are many, many more themes to explore, unpick and devour in Smith’s incredibly lustrous, rich and intricate work, How To Be Both. The predominant theme that sung heavily during my experience reading this novel was that of grief and loss and, not starting anew, but continuing forth with memories of the past embedded in our everyday, with our faces towards a new destination… “… cause although it seemed to be the end of the world to me — it wasn’t. There was a lot more world: cause roads that look set to take you in one direction will sometimes twist back on themselves without ever seeming anything other than straight…”
