How to Be Both

384 pages

English language

Published 2015 by Penguin Books, Limited.

ISBN:
978-0-14-102520-9
Copied ISBN!

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (1 review)

This 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, fictional gets real - and all life's givens get given a second chance.

10 editions

Review of 'How to Be Both' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I think I'm done with this...Kindle version shows me at 50% but then the book "starts over" with the sections reversed. They are identical in the second half, right?

I read Francesco's "Eyes" section first and found it to be brilliant. I preferred it to George's "Camera" section.

Subjects

  • Fiction, historical
  • Artists, fiction
  • Italy, fiction
  • Fiction, women