Synopsis
One day in post-Brexit, mid-pandemic Britain, artist Sandy Gray receives an unexpected phone call from university acquaintance Martina Pelf.
Martina is calling Sandy to ask for help with a mysterious question she's been left with after she's spent half a day locked in a room by border control officials for no reason she can fathom:
'Curlew or curfew? You choose.'
And what's any of this got to do with the story of a young and talented blacksmith hounded from her trade and her home more than five hundred years ago?
Ali Smith's novel takes wing, soaring between our atomised present and our medieval past in the hope we can open our locked down homes and selves to all the other times, other species, other histories, other possibilities.
Publisher information
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
- ISBN: 9780241993958
- Number of pages: 240
- Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 15 mm
- Weight: 170g
- Languages: English
Customer Reviews
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wonderful book
What a wonderful book. It is hard to categorise and is full of cruelty and beauty. I had a story that it was written in one sitting, like peeling an apple ... READ MORE
Highly recommended.
A book about the COVID age and what is happening in this age. It's a sort of flush of consciousness and the plot exists but it's a sort of general picture ... READ MORE
“…a story is never an answer. A story is always a question.”
Ali Smith is a writer who never ceases to amaze and inspire me in her ways of thinking; her shedding light onto the topics that she explores with such pois... READ MORE
Magnificent follow-up
As the name – and cover – suggest, Companion Piece isn't simply Smith's next full-length work after her recent Seasonal Quartet, but an accompaniment to it... READ MORE
A very welcome part 5 of a 4-part series
A brilliant “companion piece” to the exemplary Seasonal Quartet.
Once again the author perfectly captures the zeitgeist of the early 2020s whilst also myst... READ MORE
Enjoyably strange and surreal chronicle of our times
I was pleased to see that Ali Smith had written this 'Companion Piece' as it felt like her seasonal quartet had unfinished business; the Covid-19 pandemic ... READ MORE
Doesn’t disappoint
If you’re already a fan of Ali Smith’s novels this latest work doesn’t disappoint, and it doesn’t require you to have read the preceding four to which it c... READ MORE