The two best reads of 2014

By Maggie Fergusson

YOU CAN LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE BY CLICKING THE ICON IN THE TOOLBAR

NOVEL OF THE YEAR How to be Both by Ali Smith, Hamish Hamilton, hardback, out now. How do you tell a story, “and tell another underneath”? That’s what this very-nearly-Booker-winning novel sets out to do. There are two versions: identical cover, same ISBN. One opens in the 15th century, with the life of a little-known fresco painter, Francesco del Cossa, whose work was hidden under whitewash for four centuries; the other in the “cold grey horseless world” of the 21st century, where a Cambridge schoolgirl mourns her mother. Their lives intertwine—they learn from and comfort one another. Ali Smith writes with fierce wit, intelligence and love, tossing out thoughts that reverberate long after the last page is turned. “I’m good at the real and the true and the beautiful,” Cossa says, and “the place where all three meet.” That is Smith’s genius in a nutshell.