Companion Piece by Ali Smith

How hard is Companion Piece to read?

Companion Piece scores 73 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it very challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 62 out of 100

Smith deploys a rich literary vocabulary punctuated by etymological digressions — an entire chapter traces the word 'hello' through Middle French, Old English, and Old High German — and archaic slang from a 1690s rogues' lexicon (lanspresado, culver, pittikin). The historical strand peppers its prose with period-appropriate terms while the contemporary strand wields words like 'syntactical patterning' and 'Zeitgeist' to deliberate comic effect. More demanding than standard literary fiction but without the invented or multilingual coinages of Joyce or Woolf.

Sentence structure: 68 out of 100

Smith alternates between punchy, staccato sentences ('Joyful dog running across grass.') and long, breathless runs that accumulate political horrors — a single paragraph catalogues pandemic-era government failures for half a page with only comma pauses. She fragments syntax for rhythm, deploys unconventional dashes mid-clause, and writes dialogue stripped of attribution that forces readers to track speakers by voice alone. The overall effect is more demanding than Ishiguro but far from the Jamesian hypotaxis of The Golden Bowl.

Abstraction: 72 out of 100

Concrete comic scenes — the Pelf twins invading Sand's lockdown house, a dog directing a car journey by ear position — give way without warning to extended philosophical meditation on the etymology of companionship, the politics of border control, and the nature of time versus bird as existential choice. Smith uses the central puzzle (curlew or curfew, you choose) as a lever to raise abstract questions about freedom, authority, and what we do with our allotted time. The abstraction is embedded in action rather than separated from it, demanding readers hold both registers simultaneously.

Information density: 70 out of 100

Each section packs literary allusion (Coleridge's albatross, Dylan Thomas's fire poetry, Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter, Hamlet's Pyrrhus, e.e. cummings), historical context (the Cottingley Fairies, 1690s vagrancy laws, the Irish Troubles), and pandemic political satire within the same narrative beat. The historical blacksmith strand adds a second complete story-world running in parallel. Smith deploys this density at pace — the book is short (under 200 pages) but requires sustained attention to track its interlocking registers.

Narrative indirection: 75 out of 100

Smith never explains how the medieval girl's story connects to Sandy's present — no authorial bridge is offered. Readers must infer that the blacksmith girl's persecution for vagrancy and skill rhymes with Martina's border detention, that the Boothby Lock's hidden ivy mechanism mirrors the novel's own structure, and that 'companion piece' refers simultaneously to the historical tale, to Sandy's father, and to the dog. The Pelf family's intrusion into Sandy's house must be read allegorically as England's social fabric fragmenting under pandemic and political pressure.

Symbolic density: 78 out of 100

The Boothby Lock — a medieval mechanism disguised as a growth of ivy, beautiful and nearly unpickable — functions as the novel's central symbol for art, the body, and England's borders. Curlew and curfew are yoked as a sustained metaphor for the choice between nature and authoritarian control of time. The wolf-that-is-not-there from the opening pages reappears in Sand's final dream as recovered vitality. Ivy recurs as a figure for tenacious, unkillable life — the novel's last image is ivy growing back over whatever tries to cut it.

Ironic distance: 72 out of 100

Smith names the property-developer antagonist family 'Pelf' — a Middle English word for ill-gotten money — and has them lecture Sandy on her lack of a website while occupying her house during lockdown. The Cerberus passage reimagines the three-headed hell-hound as a music-hall comedian receiving a corrupt police officer with weary familiarity. The dog Shep, given an extended philosophical monologue on human evil, speaks with the deadpan authority of a don before Sandy realizes she has fallen asleep. Smith sustains sympathy and satirical distance simultaneously throughout.

Resolution withholding: 78 out of 100

The medieval blacksmith's story simply stops — her fate after the branding is left open. The curlew/curfew riddle is analysed but never resolved; 'you choose' is the only answer offered. Sandy's father recovers, but the novel ends not on reunion but on an image of ivy regenerating regardless of who tries to cut it back. Martina Inglis disappears from the narrative once her story has been told and her passports have still not been returned. Smith withholds the satisfactions of plot resolution to place pressure on the reader's own interpretive choice.

Structural complexity: 75 out of 100

The novel runs two completely separate narratives — contemporary pandemic England and medieval England — in alternating sections without explanation or transition. Chapter headings are structured as binary oppositions ('Goodbye v hello', 'Real v fake', 'Tragedy v farce') that the text then deconstructs. An extended etymological essay on the word 'hello' interrupts the plot without apology. The Cerberus fantasy sequence breaks into realist mode mid-chapter. The overall structure is closer to Flights (116 discontinuous fragments) in its resistance to conventional novelistic progression than to anything with a linear arc.

How Companion Piece is regarded

Companion Piece holds a literary regard score of 55 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

About the author

Ali Smith