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I'm not supposed to get everything, I know that. And I have a ready excuse, having read this book before and after Thanksgiving. That chronological reading experience was on my mind, even as I read this, because Ali Smith talks about before and after, then and now, in this ostensibly bifurcated novel(s).

I better explain the plot/structure for anything of what I'm saying to make sense. There are two parts to this book, two equally divided stories. The first part, in my edition*, is in the here and now, because precocious teenager George (Georgia) often connects to the world via smartphone, and she connects to the past that way as well. She views her life now as being before and after her mother's death. And her story is told that way. This is lovely storytelling, familiar to anyone who has read Ali Smith, but it never felt like some template. One story within the before story is that George's mother became intrigued with the paintings of Francesco del Cossa and took George and George's younger brother to Italy to take a look. How cool a Mom is that? After the mom dies, the paintings of del Cossa become a lingering thread for George. While I had issues with some of the plotting of this part, I loved the storytelling. But that was before Thanksgiving.

I shouldn't use a houseful of people and a daunting list of cooking chores as excuses for missing a literary point. (And, oh, did I mention the wine?) I'm perfectly capable of meandering off to sneak in a few dozen pages even at the peak of a party. But by Day 4, I was finding part two a bit of a chore.

Part two takes us back to the 15th Century and to the voice of del Cossa as he learns his art. He has some recurring vision of a young girl looking at his painting.

Now, Ali Smith is not writing some thriller here. There will not be some in-your-face moment when the connection, if there is a connection, will be explained. You'd be in the wrong aisle. There is no Del Cossa Code. Ali Smith is too good for that, and she respects her readers too much, to be that glib. And thankfully so. Still, the juxtaposition of these stories seemed a bit forced to me.

I kept getting back to the before and after theme. Remember a time before the internet? When I read Hesse forty years ago, a reference to St. Matthew's Passion would send me scurrying to the library to check out the album. Now, I'd just YouTube it.

Reading How to be both, I had to keep my laptop busy, simultaneously looking up St. Vincent Ferrer and St. Lucy and The Annunciation. Lucy's the one with the hand holding the eyes and the Annunciation is the one with the snail. What one learns is that you could be really weird, even in the 15th Century. Meaning: There have always been people WHO CAN SEE THINGS. That's comforting somehow. And this is no blasphemy, merely a reasserting of the power of the gaze back at us from outside us always on us. And, an eye with no light is an eye that can't see. There's a lot of eye symbolism going on.

What I was getting at, before I meandered, was asking myself, and you, whether this book could be read without the internet. Smith certainly doesn't add glossy inserts. But her descriptions of the paintings were somehow inadequate.

While I liked the way George told her story better than the fuzzied up way del Cossa told his story, the painter did try to explain what he sees: I like a nice bold curve in a line, his back a curve at the shoulder: a sadness?

And I liked the pretense of two teenaged girls changing song titles into Latin.

Adiuvete!
Quem volo es
Puella fuvis oculis
Res vesana parvaque amor nomine

How's that for a playlist?

*(I've heard that some editions reverse the orders of the stories, del Cossa going first. I didn't like this enough to experiment. But I've sure thought about it.)