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Companion piece

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

The unmissable new work from Ali Smith, following the dazzling Man Booker-shortlisted Seasonal quartet


'A story is never an answer. A story is always a question.'


Here we are in extraordinary times.
Is this history?

What happens when we cease to trust governments, the media, each other?
What have we lost?
What stays with us?
What does it take to unlock our future?

Following her astonishing quartet of Seasonal novels, Ali Smith again lights a way for us through the nightmarish now, in a vital celebration of companionship in all its forms.

'Every hello, like every voice, holds its story ready, waiting.'

© Ali Smith 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

Superb, radical, remarkable
New York Times
A lockdown story of wayward genius . . . Lyrical visions alternate with fables and farce, history with Covid, in the scheme-busting fifth part of Smith's seasonal quartet
Guardian
Scintillating . . . Companion Piece, like life, is messy, funny, sad, beautiful and mysterious
Observer
Both a standalone novel and a coda to her Seasonal quartet, Ali Smith's latest, set during the pandemic, offers a wise and humane voice for perilous times
Financial Times
Smith's way of telling a story - looping in time; switching from one fast-flicking consciousness to another; tying up radically different periods of history in a single place - and her amused delight in the flexibilities of language feel not only modernist but, better than that, modern
The New Statesman
Alive to the music and light of language
Washington Post
Smith's work is brainy and moving, thoughtful and playful
NPR
Like Smith's other novels, Companion piece is a formally dazzling story, constructed from a découpage of funny, messy, beautifully disparate elements
Esquire
It is remarkable to be alive at the same time as Scottish writer Ali Smith . . . Smith is intellectually rigorous yet democratic, warm and - crucially - playful
Los Angeles Times
Author Ali Smith
Narrator Natalie Simpson
Duration 4 hours and 55 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9780241994528
Format Audiobook
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Genre Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Politics
Availability AU, GB, IE

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