Hello and welcome to the Audio Book Club for April 2015.

I'm Katie Waldman, Slate's Words Correspondent, and I'm here in the D.C. studio with Hannah Rosen,

who wears a plethora of writing and editing hats here at Slate and around the world.

Hi, Hannah.

Around the world, I think, is exaggerating.

I thought you were going to say who wears and then tell us what Hannah's outfit is to.

What I'm actually wearing.

Oh, yeah.

I could, but maybe you want to remain shrouded in secrecy.

Exactly, like this novel.

And whose dulcet tones you just heard from the New York studio.

We have New York Times Magazine staff

writer and political GabFest Luminary and all-around awesome person. Emily Bazelon. Welcome, Emily.

Thank you. Katie, you're such a, like, lovely flattering host. I'm buttering you guys up now

so that when we disagree, vis-versely, about the book, it'll be like, wait, where did those knives come from?

She seems so nice.

Yeah, Emily's used to David, who's like, and there's Emily.

Exactly.

Well, we are going to talk about Ali Smith's novel, How to Be Both Today. It was shortlisted for last year's Man Booker Prize. This double helix of a book twists together two narrative strands. The first belongs to a contemporary teenager named George, who has just lost her mother. And the second to an early Renaissance painter, Francesco Del del Casa, who is at once painting a fresco for

the Duke of Ferrara, but also seems to have been conjured back from the dead to observe George

in her grief. Structurally, and on a language level, the book is incredibly inventive. For one thing,

it exists in two versions. Some people get the section from the painter's perspective first and then George's section. Other people have that order reversed. I also found the writing to be exceedingly beautiful and lyrical, but not always easy to follow. And hopefully we can dig into all of that. But before we get too far, I do want to issue the usual ABC spoiler siren.

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