Me before starting Artful: hmm I’m not really sure how much I’ll enjoy a book that’s a fusion of essay, literature lecture and fiction...
Ali Smith: Hold my beer.
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Truly, I didn’t think I’d enjoy this one, and while there were some parts that went over my head (classic Ali Smith tbf) for the most part I was reading in sheer awe. This is Smith’s love letter to literature. She explores the myriad of ways literature can impact us, change our view of the world, the ways it can be read and reread and different meanings extracted from it.
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A quote from a critic on the back likens it to being at a dinner party with some of literature’s greats and I concur - imagine them all holding forth over some glasses of wine, yeah you might not catch all of it but dammit you’re happy to be there and happy to glean what you can from their brilliance. That’s what this book was like for me.
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It made me want to read more widely, read better, read MORE, and I will definitely, 100 percent be reading this book again in the future, many times, myself a different person each time I pick it up and new meanings revealed to the new me.