I don't quite know what to make of this book, and while I liked one half - the contemporary half - I didn't get a whole lot out of the historical part. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize this year, and it does come highly regarded by some, although it does polarize..it also comes in two versions; the only difference between the two versions, I believe, is that the two parts of the book come in a different order - in one version the contemporary story comes first, in the other the historical part comes first. It's a perplexing and confusing novel, although thought provoking, and Ali Smith doesn't make it easy on the reader. The contemporary part of the story is the most conventional and accessible, but it does move backward and forward in time, and looks at a family's grief following the sudden death of a teenage girl's mother. The girl, George, is exceptionally well drawn, probably one of the best and most convincing teenage characters I've read; but the story seems incomplete. The second part (in my edition anyway) shifts to a fifteenth century Italian artist, Francesco del Cossa, a work of whose George's mother became obsessed with and took the family to see before she died. The two stories are therefore linked, but neither are really resolved, or not to me at least, possibly to a more perceptive reader they may be a bit more satisfying..