Companion piece

A lockdown story of wayward genius . . . Lyrical visions alternate with fables and farce, history with Covid, in the scheme-busting fifth part of Smith's seasonal quartet

Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Guardian

Scintillating . . . Companion Piece, like life, is messy, funny, sad, beautiful and mysterious

Alex Preston, Observer

Both a standalone novel and a coda to her Seasonal quartet, Ali Smith's latest, set during the pandemic, offers a wise and humane voice for perilous times

Financial Times

Superb, radical, remarkable

Mohsin Hamid, New York Times

Smith's way of telling a story - looping in time; switching from one fast-flicking consciousness to another; tying up radically different periods of history in a single place - and her amused delight in the flexibilities of language feel not only modernist but, better than that, modern

The New Statesman

Alive to the music and light of language

Washington Post

Smith's work is brainy and moving, thoughtful and playful

NPR

Like Smith's other novels, Companion piece is a formally dazzling story, constructed from a découpage of funny, messy, beautifully disparate elements

Esquire

It is remarkable to be alive at the same time as Scottish writer Ali Smith . . . Smith is intellectually rigorous yet democratic, warm and - crucially - playful

Los Angeles Times