Companion Piece by Ali Smith
Companion Piece continues Smith's Seasonal Quartet project, which artfully explored contemporary issues through lyrical prose and interconnected stories. This novel stands separately from the Quartet but maintains its spirit, offering a hopeful glimpse while still analyzing our changing world.
"That's what I want, the girl thought. Time taking the shape of air, only alive until it's gone. Like when a star travels like an arrow across a sky in summer. Precious stone is mud, compared. A star can be an arrow. One thing can become another. They say a soul is a fixed thing and can't be changed. But all things can change or be changed by hands or elements."
Smith's writing is as gorgeous as ever — flowing in and out of the words, playing with phrasings as smoothly as paint working its way across a particularly toothy canvas. But, while the message is as clear as her work in the Seasonal Quartet, the nuance of it was lacking and the weighty storytelling methods normally employed by Smith weren't given time or space to properly expand and develop. Perhaps there was simply too much of Ali Smith in the main character Sandy Gray to translate less obviously to the page. Though maybe it's just me and my preference for the first of her Quartet, Autumn (which is by far my favorite of the bunch) was farther away from Smith's typical writing — a phenomenon which I seem to fall into quite often, preferring out-of-character offerings from authors.
Audiobook, as narrated by Natalie Simpson: Simpson did a great job — her reading voice is fantastic, and I wouldn't hesitate to listen to another audiobook with her at the mic. However, her voice is considerably younger sounding than what could've better served Sandy, who is in her fifties for the majority of the book.
P.S. Just as in Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer, the print version of this book lacks punctuation marks to set apart any dialogue from the main text. This typically affects my ability to properly absorb the story (and flares my ire, honestly), so if that's you, too — I fully recommend this in its audio format.
