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Seasonal Quartet #4
Summer
In the present, Sacha knows the world's in trouble. Her brother Robert just is trouble. Their mother and father are having trouble. Meanwhile the world's in meltdown - and the real meltdown hasn't even started yet.
In the past, a lovely summer. A different brother and sister know they're living on borrowed time.
This is a story about people on the brink of change. They're family, but they think they're strangers. So: where does family begin? And what do people who think they've got nothing in common have in common?
Summer.
In the past, a lovely summer. A different brother and sister know they're living on borrowed time.
This is a story about people on the brink of change. They're family, but they think they're strangers. So: where does family begin? And what do people who think they've got nothing in common have in common?
Summer.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published August 6, 2020
612 people are currently reading
29.7k people want to read
About the author
Ali Smith
150books5,124followersAli Smith is a writer, born in Inverness, Scotland, to working-class parents. She was raised in a council house in Inverness and now lives in Cambridge. She studied at Aberdeen, and then at Cambridge, for a Ph.D. that was never finished. In a 2004 interview with writing magazine Mslexia, she talked briefly about the difficulty of becoming ill with chronic fatigue syndrome for a year and how it forced her to give up her job as a lecturer at University of Strathclyde to focus on what she really wanted to do: writing. She has been with her partner Sarah Wood for 17 years and dedicates all her books to her.
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January 26, 2022
Summer brother autumn sister
Time and time again are gone
Out of season I will find her
With time’s fallen leaves behind her
Every time I sing this song
Summer uses the characters of Autumn and Winter to explore the themes of Spring (while also making it clear that those themes ran through the full quartet) through a new shared experience for us all.
Featuring:
Wendy, Elisabeth, Zoe, Daniel, Hannah, Adrienne Albert, Klein, Pauline Boty - from Autumn
Charlotte, Art, Iris, Sophia (in memory), Barbara Hepworth - from Winter
Hero, Katherine Mansfield- from Spring
We learn:
- Why Sophia hid that stone under the shoes in her wardrobe and (and how by doing so she inadvertently saved Daniel’s most valuable possession and - this may be a stretch on my behalf - his life).
- What inspired the lyrics of the one-hit wonder Daniel penned (the copyright fees for which, sourced by Elisabeth paid his nursing home fees) and the story behind who co-wrote the song.
- Who lead Daniel to his love for Chaplin
- Why Boubat’s “petite fille aux feuilles mortes jardin du Luxembourg Paris 1946� and the leaf covered Autumn girl came to mean so much to Daniel, and is so key to the Quartet.
-How a graphologist foretold Daniel’s key role across the whole quartet (I showed him a piece in my own hand and he said “you are a man for many seasons�): with lover and child in Winter, lover and father of neighbour in Spring, and sister’s great grandchildren in Summer.
And we find:
How Einstein visited Cromer (see my picture above); how not being Einstein saved a future filmmaker's life - and how ein stein both reunites a mother and a baby, and a father and his son
How Einstein with his exploration of time and space, and his appearance "Charlie Chaplin with the brow of Shakespeare", and his fleeing from persecution captures the entire theme of the quartet.
And how another Albert also links Autumn to Summer.
—ĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔĔ�
Comparisons of recurring themes and concepts in the books:
SA4A
All of the books feature the firm SA4A (Smith, Ali, Quartet, Autumn) which has served as a symbol of the threat of faceless and almost unknown multinationals.
In Autumn, we see SA4A as a quasi-police private security firm (whose actual purposes we only discover later)
In Winter Art works for their entertainments division to enforce copyright on emerging artists.
In Spring book Britanny works for them at a UK Immigration Removal Centre.
In Summer Robert's mother's door is forced by bailiffs from their power branch and we are also told the firm also operates a government approved service to busload homeless people down to London
Cover Artwork
A wrap around cover featuring a David Hockney seasonal picture of the same tunnel of trees: respectively: Autumn - “Early November Tunnel�, Winter - “Winter Tunnel with Snow� and Spring “Late Spring Tunnel�. Summer has “Tunnel 2�
Endpaper artwork
Endpaper artwork by a key female artist featured in the book: Autumn - Pauline Boty’s “The Only Blonde in the World�; Winter - Barbara Hepworth “Winter Solstice� and Spring - Tacita Dean’s “Why Cloud". Summer has Lorenza Mazetti's "Self Portrait"
Past Decades
A concentration on the modern day resonances of a historic 20th Century decade: Autumn - 1960s, Winter - 1980s, Spring - 1920s.
Summer features the 1940s.
Female artists from the decade
Autumn has Pauline Boty
Winter has Barbara Hepworth
Spring has Katherine Mansfield
Summer has the Italian (and post war immigrant to London) filmmaker Lorenza Mazzetti.
Interestingly whereas the other artists all died tragically young - Boty of cancer, Hepworth of a fire in her studio, Mansfield of TB. Mazzetti lived until 92 - dying this very year (2020). However she (as we find in the book) avoided an even earlier tragic Einstein related death in the Holocaust.
Art influencing characters
Actual works of art of the artist figuring in the book and sparking a character’s imagination
In Autumn Elisabeth looks at a book of Boty’s paintings; in Winter Art’s mother views a Hepworth sculpture (I believe “Nesting Stones�) owned by his father; in Spring Richard visits a gallery to view Dean’s work. �
In Summer Charlotte watches Lorenza Mazetti's "Together"
Contemporary events
Of course the key idea of the Quartet is the coverage of immediately contemporary events woven through the text - but each book has a concentration on key overarching themes: Autumn - the Brexit vote, Winter - Trump's election, Spring - the issue of borders (both the Irish border and those erected to deter migrations)
Summer - of course has COVID-19 and the continuing hostile immigration regime. It even (given it was the week prior to the book going for advanced proof printing) has George Floyd’s tragic death.
A link between past political actions from the crucial decade and contemporary events
This was a crucial part of the concept of seasonality that Smith set out to explore when she commenced the quartet
the concept that our real energy, our real history, is cyclic in continuance and at core, rather than consecutive and how closely to contemporaneousness a finished book might be able to be in the world, and yet how it could also be, all through, very much about stratified, cyclic time
In Autumn very deliberate parallels are drawn between the Profumo scandal and the Brexit vote � the concept of the lies of those in power. ĨI Winter the environmental and climate-change activism of Charlotte (Art’s ex-girlfriend) and the refugee involvement of the modern day Iris are linked directly to the Silent-Spring inspired environmental activism of the commune where Iris lives many years before and her role in the Greenham Common protests.
In Spring the Irish border complications to the Brexit issue are linked to the death of Michael Collins in 1922. �
In Summer we see the immigrant camps of today and those of the 1940s (in particular that in which Daniel Gluck is interned. But most importantly of all Smith explores how COVID has given us a new shared experience of lockdown.
Rhythmic chapters
An rhythmical chapter, clearly designed to be read aloud: Autumn - the famous “All across the country …� chapter which Smith seemed to use in most of her readings; Winter the opening � �.. is dead� chapter; Spring has two We Want ..� chapters (one opening and the other voiced by technology giants)
Summer begins with a "so?" chapter - capturing the way in which most people just shrug their shoulders at increasing injustice.
Shakespeare
A key link to a main Shakespeare plays (as well as an opening and seasonally linked Shakespearean Epigraphs and links to other plays).
The main plays are all one of Shakespeare's late romances: Autumn - The Tempest, Winter Cymbeline, Spring � Pericles.
Summer features - The Winter's Tale.
And the Epigraph is "O, she's warm" (from that play)
Dickens
A key link to a Dickens work: Autumn � A Tale of Two Cities, Winter � A Christmas Carol; Spring - The Story of Richard Doubledick and Summer is both David Copperfield and the Haunted Man (which also gives the book the epigraph "Lord, keep my memory green"
Dickens Opening Lines
Autumn starts: "It was the worst of times, it was the worst of time"
A Tale of Two Cities starts "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"
Winter starts "God was dead: to begin with"
A Christmas Carol starts: "Marley was dead, to begin with"
Spring starts "Now what we don't want is facts"
Hard Times starts "NOW, what I want is, Facts"
Summer starts “Everybody said: so?� Just like The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain
And then the next chapter starts “Whether I shall turn out to be the heroine of my own life, Sacha's mother says"
David Copperfield starts "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show"
Eduardo Boubat
An reference to Eduardo Boubat’s “petite fille aux feuilles mortes jardin du Luxembourg Paris 1946�. A photograph which (as the opening song shows and as is confirmed by this book) surely is dear to Daniel as it reminds him of his beloved Sister Hannah.
In Autumn Daniel remembers the postcard of it that he bought in Paris in the 1980s.
In Winter, Sophie - the recipient we later realise of the postcard is reminded of the postcard by the disembodied head she starts seeing
In Spring, a disembodied voice (perhaps taken, as we later realise is much of the book, from Florence’s Hot Air book) says “I’m the child who’s been buried in leaves� with a later reference to “children with clothes as ragged as suits of old leaves�.
In Summer we get Yeah and you with your the day will come when we’ll all be wearing leaves instead of clothes vision of the world, Robert said. It will, Sacha said. We’ll have to change everything. And leaves really matter.
TV relationships
Set alongside the literary references, relationships with TV stars from older years: In Autumn Wendy participates in a game show and forms a relationship with her minor celebrity participant (a former child TV star); in Winter Art’s step-father was a sitcom star; In Spring Richard, is an ex- Play for Today Director for TV and meets Paddy, his muse, confidant, closest friend and one-time (actually make that a double - two-time) lover through their collaboration as Director and writer.
In Summer Sacha's mother's one moment of fame as an actress was in an old TV advert for washing-up liquid.
A Love of and interest in Charlie Chaplin
Both his work and his own life, introduced in each book by Daniel but then passed on in turn to other characters by those who Daniel infused with his love for Chaplin
In Summer we realise that this love originated with Hannah - and that perhaps Daniel took it on from her.
The symbolism of commons and fences
The image that Ali Smith first thought of when she envisaged the Seasonal quartet was a fence - and as commented in my opening remarks the key for Ali Smith throughout this quartet was to emphasise that "nothing is not connected" and that "division is a lie" ie we have much in common.
Autumn Elisabeth’s mother Wendy is shocked by a fence erected on a common near her home (the fence serving a metaphor for Brexit ... at least in Autumn).
Winter Iris chains herself to a fence at the very start of the Greenham Commons protests.
Spring the fences are in the Immigration centre and the replacement of the commons by enclosures was the first stage of the Highland clearances which feature in the novel.
Summer Grace looking for an old English church she visited three decades ago .. came instead to a massive wire fence that seemed to block off most of the common. The same fence we assume as Wendy found in Autumn with its purpose now revealed.
Internment of Aliens/Asylum Seekers
Something which (as I commented above) increasingly to me seems to be the crucial theme of the entire quartet.
Autumn One of the nurses tells Elisabeth about Daniel's childhood and him voluntarily joining his father in an internment camp in the war. Wendy's attack on the SA4A fence at the end of the book is prompted by her hearing an article on children being sent to adult centres.
Winter Iris has returned from Greece where she is working among asylum seekers - and at Sophia's house she discusses his, while Lux (posing as Charlotte) discussed her own family's life as asylum seekers in Canada and subsequently in her case as an immigrant in the UK.
Spring Much of the book is set in an Immigration Removal Centre, where of course Brit works, Florence visits. We have the Auld Alliance and their work.
Summer A large chunk of the book is set in the internment camp where Daniel meets Cyril Klein (as well as two famous life artists - Fred Uhlman and Kurt Schwitters), Hannah works helping people fleeing Vichy France, Grace walks past the SA4A internment camp which was the same one Wendy attacked, Iris brings her help of asylum seekers back to Sophia's old house where Charlotte joins her as does Hero (from the centre where Brit worked),
And of course with lockdown we all have a shared experience of internment.
Time Containers
When discussing the quartet, Smith commented
But we're time-containers, we hold all our diachrony, our pasts and our futures (and also the pasts and futures of all the people who made us and who in turn we'll help to make) in every one of our consecutive moments / minutes / days / yearsĨI Autumn this concept was captured particularly in Daniel’s dreams and his memories of his fleeing from Nazi Germany and of his brilliant sister killed in the holocaust. �
In Winter the concept is even more explicit when discussing Art’s visions of the floating coastline, Lux explains what she calls her own coastline.
In Spring the idea is I think best captured in the almost interminable 11.29 on the railway platform in Kingussie as Richard reflects on much of his life
Is a single minute really this long. Is the clock that’s broken the one inside him
In Summer not only do we get the reappearance of Hannah but we get this passage (with a literal time container)
Time is dimensional. Robert Greenlaw has just demonstrated not just the curve and dimensionality of time but also its multiple nature and given himself a TOTAL HIGH by affixing irremovably a piece of curved and dimensional time into the curved dimension of a mortal hand. Heh. !
The song he’d sing if he could still sing would be about how time is more than one thing, time is glass and sand, time is brittle and fluid, time is fragile and tough, time is sharp and blunt, time is now and ancient, time is before and after, time is smooth and rough and if you try to remove your attachment to time, time will laugh out loud and take the skin off you.
And of course via Einstein an exploration of the nature of time and space.
Read
January 28, 20221
So you finally got a copy of the fourth book?
Uh huh...
A bit behind the times, aren't you? Summer's nearly over.
Shh. Can't you see I'm reading!
Would have thought you'd have been quicker off the mark, is all...
Sorry, it's just that I've reached the page where there's a stone I recognise.
One of the Stones, is it? Wow!
It's a Hepworth marble stone, not a bloody rolling stone.
What the...
Never mind. Go to sleep.
Barbara Hepworth
…ĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦ�
2
You look like you had a bad night.
No one makes me not sleep like Ali Smith does.
That doesn't sound good...
It's not a criticism, not remotely!
All these negatives are confusing me at this early hour.
Well, she crammed so many world issues into the first part of this book that I've been awake all night worrying about them.
Pretty heavy! Like that stone you mentioned last night!
The odd thing is that the writing's not heavy at all, it's all delivered in a light and airy way.
So why all the angst?
Because even though I watch stuff about migration issues, climate change, etc, on TV, when Ali Smith writes about them, it changes me, it pushes my buttons in a new way.
She's remote controlling you!
Funny you should say that because there's a remote control in the story, only it's been posted—as in posted in a letterbox—to an island with a volcanic hole in the middle of it.
What's funny about that?
Just that I remember thinking the first book in this series had a hole in the middle of it, a burnt-out hole...oh, never mind.
Deception Island, Antarctica
…ĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦ�
3
How's the book going? Doesn't seem as if you've been turning the leaves very fast?
Well, I've been stopping to look things up.
What sort of things?
The Italian filmmaker, Lorenza Mazatti, for example, and the film she made in 1956 called Together about two men with no voices, based on a story called the The Glass Marble..
First it was marble stones. Now it's glass marbles!
There are children playing marbles in the film, which I just watched, and when I came back to the book, the opening scene of the film was described and I felt I was one of the watchers in the film, I could see it all happening on the page in front of me.
Next you'll be telling me you're a character in the book!
Well, I do feel like a silent shadow character. There's a shadow brother with no voice in this book, and I remember that in the first book there was a silent shadow sister. Plus Ali Smith implies that everywhere in the world there are shadow versions of what we live, have lived, will live, and they are not 'other', they are a part of us even if we can't see or hear them.
Still from Lorenza 's film 'Together'
…ĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦ�
4
You're more than half-way through! Any more thoughts.
I'm really happy that this is becoming the book of Daniel—he was my favourite character in the entire series. It feels right that the books begin and end with him. He truly is a man for many seasons. Another character (real-life artist Kurt Schwitters), has just called Daniel 'lucky', and I had thought of him already as lucky in the first book, lucky to be dying leisurely and in comfort—though I notice Ali Smith moved him out of the home for the elderly where he was living in .
Maybe she was protecting him from Covid!
More like she needs him to be able to have visitors! It's the month of February 2020, and he's about to have some significant visitors...from
Collage by Kurt Schwitters
…ĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦ�
5
So, how were the visitors?
Daniel in the future got a present from the past.
Love that! Plu-bloody-perfect!
It's Ali Smith! She's my muse—and she's a wizard with sand-timers. I wish she'd step out of the dust jacket of this book and into our living-room. I'd give her such a here-and-now welcome!
Glad you're not a conjuror! I mean, a strange person suddenly appearing...
Don't worry, she's not going to appear! Photos in books don't come to life!
It's a pity the Hockney painting on the front cover wouldn't come to life. I fancy a walk down a green and leafy lane...
But that's just what's happening now in the book! A character is walking under those very Hockney trees...
Painting by David Hockney
…ĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦ�
6
Hey, you're nearly at the end!
Remember me saying that Daniel got a present from the past when the visitors came. Well near the end of the book, he gets another 'present from the past', and it's phrased exactly like that! And there's more talk of stones...and leaves...and autumn sisters..and Rilke...and..
Do you realise that your enthusiasm for everything in this book is beginning to make you sound like a child, a particularly ridiculous child?
I don't care! When I read Ali Smith, my inner child wakes up, my feet leave the ground and phrases like 'Leben oder theater' make me cry buckets, and phrases like 'birds of the airBnBs' make me laugh like a barrel.
Please tell me you're not going to post this ridiculous dialogue online for other people to see?
Well, yes, I am, as I did for the other books in the series. You started it all when you asked me, What are you reading? as I was beginning the first book. The dialogue format took off from there.
And you think all this is worth telling the world about, because...?
I don't know what it's worth. What I do know is that I found this book super stimulating and very thought provoking, and I'd like to share that 'ridiculous' enthusiasm with the community of readers I hang out with online because I think Ali Smith is a king of queens and a queen of kings in the literary world of today, and I want people to hear that! I want to sing, Ali Smith, You are my sunshine!
Painting by Charlotte Salomon
So you finally got a copy of the fourth book?
Uh huh...
A bit behind the times, aren't you? Summer's nearly over.
Shh. Can't you see I'm reading!
Would have thought you'd have been quicker off the mark, is all...
Sorry, it's just that I've reached the page where there's a stone I recognise.
One of the Stones, is it? Wow!
It's a Hepworth marble stone, not a bloody rolling stone.
What the...
Never mind. Go to sleep.
Barbara Hepworth
…ĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦ�
2
You look like you had a bad night.
No one makes me not sleep like Ali Smith does.
That doesn't sound good...
It's not a criticism, not remotely!
All these negatives are confusing me at this early hour.
Well, she crammed so many world issues into the first part of this book that I've been awake all night worrying about them.
Pretty heavy! Like that stone you mentioned last night!
The odd thing is that the writing's not heavy at all, it's all delivered in a light and airy way.
So why all the angst?
Because even though I watch stuff about migration issues, climate change, etc, on TV, when Ali Smith writes about them, it changes me, it pushes my buttons in a new way.
She's remote controlling you!
Funny you should say that because there's a remote control in the story, only it's been posted—as in posted in a letterbox—to an island with a volcanic hole in the middle of it.
What's funny about that?
Just that I remember thinking the first book in this series had a hole in the middle of it, a burnt-out hole...oh, never mind.
Deception Island, Antarctica
…ĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦ�
3
How's the book going? Doesn't seem as if you've been turning the leaves very fast?
Well, I've been stopping to look things up.
What sort of things?
The Italian filmmaker, Lorenza Mazatti, for example, and the film she made in 1956 called Together about two men with no voices, based on a story called the The Glass Marble..
First it was marble stones. Now it's glass marbles!
There are children playing marbles in the film, which I just watched, and when I came back to the book, the opening scene of the film was described and I felt I was one of the watchers in the film, I could see it all happening on the page in front of me.
Next you'll be telling me you're a character in the book!
Well, I do feel like a silent shadow character. There's a shadow brother with no voice in this book, and I remember that in the first book there was a silent shadow sister. Plus Ali Smith implies that everywhere in the world there are shadow versions of what we live, have lived, will live, and they are not 'other', they are a part of us even if we can't see or hear them.
Still from Lorenza 's film 'Together'
…ĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦ�
4
You're more than half-way through! Any more thoughts.
I'm really happy that this is becoming the book of Daniel—he was my favourite character in the entire series. It feels right that the books begin and end with him. He truly is a man for many seasons. Another character (real-life artist Kurt Schwitters), has just called Daniel 'lucky', and I had thought of him already as lucky in the first book, lucky to be dying leisurely and in comfort—though I notice Ali Smith moved him out of the home for the elderly where he was living in .
Maybe she was protecting him from Covid!
More like she needs him to be able to have visitors! It's the month of February 2020, and he's about to have some significant visitors...from
Collage by Kurt Schwitters
…ĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦ�
5
So, how were the visitors?
Daniel in the future got a present from the past.
Love that! Plu-bloody-perfect!
It's Ali Smith! She's my muse—and she's a wizard with sand-timers. I wish she'd step out of the dust jacket of this book and into our living-room. I'd give her such a here-and-now welcome!
Glad you're not a conjuror! I mean, a strange person suddenly appearing...
Don't worry, she's not going to appear! Photos in books don't come to life!
It's a pity the Hockney painting on the front cover wouldn't come to life. I fancy a walk down a green and leafy lane...
But that's just what's happening now in the book! A character is walking under those very Hockney trees...
Painting by David Hockney
…ĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦĦ�
6
Hey, you're nearly at the end!
Remember me saying that Daniel got a present from the past when the visitors came. Well near the end of the book, he gets another 'present from the past', and it's phrased exactly like that! And there's more talk of stones...and leaves...and autumn sisters..and Rilke...and..
Do you realise that your enthusiasm for everything in this book is beginning to make you sound like a child, a particularly ridiculous child?
I don't care! When I read Ali Smith, my inner child wakes up, my feet leave the ground and phrases like 'Leben oder theater' make me cry buckets, and phrases like 'birds of the airBnBs' make me laugh like a barrel.
Please tell me you're not going to post this ridiculous dialogue online for other people to see?
Well, yes, I am, as I did for the other books in the series. You started it all when you asked me, What are you reading? as I was beginning the first book. The dialogue format took off from there.
And you think all this is worth telling the world about, because...?
I don't know what it's worth. What I do know is that I found this book super stimulating and very thought provoking, and I'd like to share that 'ridiculous' enthusiasm with the community of readers I hang out with online because I think Ali Smith is a king of queens and a queen of kings in the literary world of today, and I want people to hear that! I want to sing, Ali Smith, You are my sunshine!
Painting by Charlotte Salomon
September 9, 2024
Summer. A season that stretches out like a cat in the sun as the long days and warm nights seem to open us up to infinite possibilities and instills us with �that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again,� such as writes in . And with summer, I have now spent a year immersed in each season along with the accompanying seasonal novel from Ali Smith’s quartet, closing the final pages of Summer just as the season begins to withdraw and the students shuffle back into schools. As in each of the previous seasonal works, Smith gorgeously captures the times in her playful and ponderous prose, both that of each denoted season but also the political and cultural climate of post-Brexit UK almost as if in real time. For Summer, the time is 2020 and the world is spiraling into the COVID pandemic. However, in the face of separation Ali Smith positions the narrative as one of connectedness, highlighted by the return of characters from previous novels who collide in their life stories and in the face of crisis Summer reminds us that art and human beauty live on. Even in captivity. , who wrote �Summer’s lease hath all too short a date,� makes an appearance along with as thematic commentary as was the case in each of the previous novels, with other figures such as filmmaker , artist , and joining the already impressive ranks of great minds to have populated the quartet to remind us of the human drive to create amidst the cyclical nature of history. A moving and masterful conclusion to a series of novels deserving of all the accolades, Summer captures the human spirit and the spirit of the season in all its warm glow of majesty.
�Time and space are what lace us all up together, Hannah says. What makes us part of the larger picture. Universally speaking. The problem is, we tend to think we’re separate. But it’s a delusion.�
I love these novels so much and was enthralled to find myself deeply immersed in the emotional resonance of summer through my reading of Summer. These books are just a balm on the psyche, always shapeshifting and surprising yet endlessly heartfelt. I love the fractured telling of the tales, with Smith weaving past and present through a shifting timeline. Often the book will jump to something completely different and I'll think "oh no but I was loving that section and I'm not sure if I'm as interested in this..." but then it'll end up being my favorite part or anecdote. These books are a joy and Ali Smith can move between gut-wrenching sadness to humor so effortlessly and eloquently it makes you feel as if the whole of the human heart is beating in these pages.
�Summer strums the loose low chords of freedom and release,� writes in her essay collection on the season, Summer Solstice , �when a person can feel their wingspan again.� Though in Smith’s Summer, we find characters about to enter the immortal season confined to their homes seeking the promised release as a pandemic sweeps the globe. Having set out to record the post-Brexit era in real time, Ali Smith was handed quite the task as the world turned upside down in 2020 and while some of the Covid aspects feel a bit thrust into the narrative, so did it feel abruptly thrust into all our lives. But even for a period of separation, much of this book is about coming together. We revisit familiar friends like Elisabeth and Daniel Gluck from Autumn or Art, Charlotte, and a late arrival of �seasoned lefty activist� Aunt Iris from Winter along with new characters such as the Greenlaw family. Connection is important to the novel and series at large, with family connections often teased without directly calling it out, and showing how the division of the Brexit vote pulls people apart far more than simple disagreement.
As Art says �time spent exchanging life and times with complete or comparative strangers can sometimes work out rather well. In some cases, it can even be life-changing.� Life changing indeed, as the meeting with the Greenlaws reveals, at least to the reader, a connection that centers Daniel at the heart of the entire quartet. Daniel, who taught us all in Autumn about the importance of art as a method of resistance or seeking beauty even in dark times. Smith, who excels at threading art and artists through the quartet—here a piece of ’s art becomes a catalyst bringing characters together—and it is perhaps her description of an early photograph capturing an otherwise empty street due to the movement of people making them appear only as blurs that makes for one of the most startlingly moving metaphors for the pandemic:
In relation to lockdown the line �we are where we aren’t� hits hard as we think of all the places we no longer were. Though, as we often see in these novels, history moves in cycles and Brexit and Covid and family separations are assessed juxtaposed with the during WWII, to which Daniel frequently flashes back into memories. �He hears the word internet and thinks the word internment,� drawing a line between the hardships of the 1940s and those of today at the borders such as in the previous novel, Spring. As Iris responds to a character claiming they feel disconnected lately, �nothing’s not connected,� both in this quartet and history.
�“Yes, it’s surreal for us here right now,� the activist says. “But it’s never not a state of emergency somewhere. We’re naive if we think life normally isn’t as surreal as fuck for most people scraping a living on this earth.� Our suffering isn’t new; it’s just different.�
The dichotomy between the darkness and beauty present here is, perhaps, how Ali Smith best captures the spirit of summer. Like in when she writes �a coming back of light was at the heart of midwinter equally as much as the waning of light,� so too is summer a season of opposites where the warmth and sun is juxtaposed with days beginning to grow shorter after the solstice. It is a reminder that, as writes. �each season is pregnant with the other.� During an on her seasonal quartet novels, Smith comments that �the seasons are never disconnected from each other anyway, they're the consequences of each other,� and summer is just as much a mixture of rebirth and dying as the rest, two sides of the same coin as winter, or, as Grace Greenlaw observes, �Summer isn’t just a merry tale. Because there’s no merry tale with the darkness.� It feels like a beginning even as it is moving towards an end.
This is well expressed through the use of Shakespeare’s (I had recently finished reading ’s retelling of the play, The Gap in Time, so was thrilled to see the play make an appearance), a play in which Grace acted in during her �immortal summer� she frequently reflects upon. �The Winter’s Tale’s all about summer, really. It’s like it says, don’t worry, another world is possible. When you’re stuck in the world at its worst, that's important. To be able to say that.� I was struck by how well this plays into the notion that summer is just as much about the memory of summer as it is the present one:
Summer amalgamates all the idealized ideas of summer into itself, it �is the memory of what we know used to be, but can never wholly recall,� as says in Summer Solstice. For Grace, summer is more the idea of summer than the actual summer and so �So we mourn it while we’re in it. Even while I’m right at the heart of it I just can’t get to the heart of it.� It is a perfect depiction of the season.
�We overload summer most out of all the seasons, I mean with our expectations of it…Summers can take it.�
This duality of summer comes screaming from the page through the suffering and the art created amongst it. It is a reminder we must make the best of it because, as Sasha, who states that the tragedy of being a teen is the older generations �give us the responsibility for everything you’ve all messed up but don’t give us any power with which to change anything� notes that, ultimately, �there will always be porn and poison, and human beings will always have to decide whether to be poisonous to others or not.� It seems particularly salient in a time when �the people who’ve never been properly valued are all holding this country together…the ones holding all our lives in their hands.� While Iris means the “essential worker,� Smith also shows us how this means the artist. Grace considers that art is �something that impresses mysteriously on you and you don’t know why,� but that lingering mystery matters. As Charlotte explains in an argument with Art over art, art is �a shock that brings us back to ourselves…What art does is, it exists…and then because we encounter it, we remember we exist too. And that one day we won’t.� Such is the task of Ali Smith to use her art to shock us back into ourselves during the recent times of unrest, to help understand and to help heal.
As misinformation and tug-of-wars on rhetoric have been central to the political discourse and culture wars of recent years, art around language seems all the more critical. As is her habit, Smith also uses art to juxtapose past and present, with artistic depictions functioning as commentary on the present day as much as they work to establish a historical basis.
Still from Lorenza Mazzetti’s film Together mentioned in the novel
I adore Smith’s playfulness with language and in Summer etymology and artistic examinations of language and rhetoric, or even how something seemingly innocuous as a fake quote by being used in a class essay can be indicative to a larger problem of misinformation and assaults on reality take center stage. As Ashley writes in her book, a task she continues despite having lost the ability to speak verbally:
With the seasonal quartet, Smith uses language to try and decode the language of the current culture wars and wed the past and present together through both the personal and political as a way to better understand the world and demonstrate the importance of art within it.
�the modern sense of being a hero is shining a bright light on things that need to be seen.�
Having spent a year with this series was one of the most lovely and rewarding reading experiences of my life. Each book charmed me in its own way and I enjoyed how well each helped open up their respective seasons and allow me to feel each season more fully and more beautifully. As a favorite season of mine, I was particularly enraptured with Summer which was, perhaps, the most upbeat of the series and felt as warm as the summer days it depicts. Summer is the time of stretching out, of romance, of joy, and I was thrilled to share all these with this book. A moving story, a brilliant conclusion and an all around amazing read. Thank you Ali Smith, these books have been a real treasure to behold.
5/5
�Add together you plus me plus time plus space. What does that all make?
…It makes you and I more than just your or I…It makes us us.�
�Time and space are what lace us all up together, Hannah says. What makes us part of the larger picture. Universally speaking. The problem is, we tend to think we’re separate. But it’s a delusion.�
I love these novels so much and was enthralled to find myself deeply immersed in the emotional resonance of summer through my reading of Summer. These books are just a balm on the psyche, always shapeshifting and surprising yet endlessly heartfelt. I love the fractured telling of the tales, with Smith weaving past and present through a shifting timeline. Often the book will jump to something completely different and I'll think "oh no but I was loving that section and I'm not sure if I'm as interested in this..." but then it'll end up being my favorite part or anecdote. These books are a joy and Ali Smith can move between gut-wrenching sadness to humor so effortlessly and eloquently it makes you feel as if the whole of the human heart is beating in these pages.
�Summer strums the loose low chords of freedom and release,� writes in her essay collection on the season, Summer Solstice , �when a person can feel their wingspan again.� Though in Smith’s Summer, we find characters about to enter the immortal season confined to their homes seeking the promised release as a pandemic sweeps the globe. Having set out to record the post-Brexit era in real time, Ali Smith was handed quite the task as the world turned upside down in 2020 and while some of the Covid aspects feel a bit thrust into the narrative, so did it feel abruptly thrust into all our lives. But even for a period of separation, much of this book is about coming together. We revisit familiar friends like Elisabeth and Daniel Gluck from Autumn or Art, Charlotte, and a late arrival of �seasoned lefty activist� Aunt Iris from Winter along with new characters such as the Greenlaw family. Connection is important to the novel and series at large, with family connections often teased without directly calling it out, and showing how the division of the Brexit vote pulls people apart far more than simple disagreement.
�What had they all wanted from each other in that vote, say, the one that had split the country, split her own family as if with a cheesewire, sliced right through the everyday to a bitterness nobody knew what to do with, one so many people used to hurt people with, whichever way they’d voted��
As Art says �time spent exchanging life and times with complete or comparative strangers can sometimes work out rather well. In some cases, it can even be life-changing.� Life changing indeed, as the meeting with the Greenlaws reveals, at least to the reader, a connection that centers Daniel at the heart of the entire quartet. Daniel, who taught us all in Autumn about the importance of art as a method of resistance or seeking beauty even in dark times. Smith, who excels at threading art and artists through the quartet—here a piece of ’s art becomes a catalyst bringing characters together—and it is perhaps her description of an early photograph capturing an otherwise empty street due to the movement of people making them appear only as blurs that makes for one of the most startlingly moving metaphors for the pandemic:
�One of his most famous photos is of boulevard du temple late 1830s taken at busy time of day and almost every moving or living thing is gone except a man standing having his shoes shined. Everyone else disappeared! It says online that’s the very first living person every photographed. All because he stood still. Yeah I thought but all the other gone people are still there too. We just can’t see them. You know how people keep saying about this time we’re in now, oh well, we are where we are. It’s more like we are where we aren’t.�
In relation to lockdown the line �we are where we aren’t� hits hard as we think of all the places we no longer were. Though, as we often see in these novels, history moves in cycles and Brexit and Covid and family separations are assessed juxtaposed with the during WWII, to which Daniel frequently flashes back into memories. �He hears the word internet and thinks the word internment,� drawing a line between the hardships of the 1940s and those of today at the borders such as in the previous novel, Spring. As Iris responds to a character claiming they feel disconnected lately, �nothing’s not connected,� both in this quartet and history.
�“Yes, it’s surreal for us here right now,� the activist says. “But it’s never not a state of emergency somewhere. We’re naive if we think life normally isn’t as surreal as fuck for most people scraping a living on this earth.� Our suffering isn’t new; it’s just different.�
The dichotomy between the darkness and beauty present here is, perhaps, how Ali Smith best captures the spirit of summer. Like in when she writes �a coming back of light was at the heart of midwinter equally as much as the waning of light,� so too is summer a season of opposites where the warmth and sun is juxtaposed with days beginning to grow shorter after the solstice. It is a reminder that, as writes. �each season is pregnant with the other.� During an on her seasonal quartet novels, Smith comments that �the seasons are never disconnected from each other anyway, they're the consequences of each other,� and summer is just as much a mixture of rebirth and dying as the rest, two sides of the same coin as winter, or, as Grace Greenlaw observes, �Summer isn’t just a merry tale. Because there’s no merry tale with the darkness.� It feels like a beginning even as it is moving towards an end.
�Summer’s surely really all about an imagined end. We head for it instinctually like it must mean something. We’re always looking for it, looking to it, heading towards it all year, the way a horizon holds the promise of a sunset. We’re always looking for the full open leaf, the open warmth, the promise that we’ll one day soon surely be able to lie back and have summer done to us; one day soon we’ll be treated well by the world. As if what it was always all about, your time on earth, was the full happy stretch of all the muscles of the body on a warmed patch of grass, one long sweet stem of that grass in the mouth.�
This is well expressed through the use of Shakespeare’s (I had recently finished reading ’s retelling of the play, The Gap in Time, so was thrilled to see the play make an appearance), a play in which Grace acted in during her �immortal summer� she frequently reflects upon. �The Winter’s Tale’s all about summer, really. It’s like it says, don’t worry, another world is possible. When you’re stuck in the world at its worst, that's important. To be able to say that.� I was struck by how well this plays into the notion that summer is just as much about the memory of summer as it is the present one:
�The briefest and slipperiest of the seasons, the one that won’t be held to account � because summer won’t be held at all, except in bits, fragments, moments, flashes of memory of so-called or imagined perfect summers, summers that never existed.�
Summer amalgamates all the idealized ideas of summer into itself, it �is the memory of what we know used to be, but can never wholly recall,� as says in Summer Solstice. For Grace, summer is more the idea of summer than the actual summer and so �So we mourn it while we’re in it. Even while I’m right at the heart of it I just can’t get to the heart of it.� It is a perfect depiction of the season.
�We overload summer most out of all the seasons, I mean with our expectations of it…Summers can take it.�
This duality of summer comes screaming from the page through the suffering and the art created amongst it. It is a reminder we must make the best of it because, as Sasha, who states that the tragedy of being a teen is the older generations �give us the responsibility for everything you’ve all messed up but don’t give us any power with which to change anything� notes that, ultimately, �there will always be porn and poison, and human beings will always have to decide whether to be poisonous to others or not.� It seems particularly salient in a time when �the people who’ve never been properly valued are all holding this country together…the ones holding all our lives in their hands.� While Iris means the “essential worker,� Smith also shows us how this means the artist. Grace considers that art is �something that impresses mysteriously on you and you don’t know why,� but that lingering mystery matters. As Charlotte explains in an argument with Art over art, art is �a shock that brings us back to ourselves…What art does is, it exists…and then because we encounter it, we remember we exist too. And that one day we won’t.� Such is the task of Ali Smith to use her art to shock us back into ourselves during the recent times of unrest, to help understand and to help heal.
�Creativity is cultural not because it is derivative of it, but because it aims to heal culture. Art saturated with the unconscious acts like a compensatory dream in the individual: it tries to rebalance and address deep-rooted problems.�
As misinformation and tug-of-wars on rhetoric have been central to the political discourse and culture wars of recent years, art around language seems all the more critical. As is her habit, Smith also uses art to juxtapose past and present, with artistic depictions functioning as commentary on the present day as much as they work to establish a historical basis.
Still from Lorenza Mazzetti’s film Together mentioned in the novel
I adore Smith’s playfulness with language and in Summer etymology and artistic examinations of language and rhetoric, or even how something seemingly innocuous as a fake quote by being used in a class essay can be indicative to a larger problem of misinformation and assaults on reality take center stage. As Ashley writes in her book, a task she continues despite having lost the ability to speak verbally:
�language distorted, used as tool of taking control of a populace by sloganeering and emotional manipulation, is in face the opposite of giving back control to populace…use of classical references and display of knowledge as rhetorical power-tools are surreptitiously also used as a marker of class and of who owns culture, who owns knowledge�
Truth gives way to the authentic lie, in other words what the voter emotionally supports, or emotional truth, which is where factual truth stops mattering, which leads in turn to total collapse of integrity and to tribalism��
With the seasonal quartet, Smith uses language to try and decode the language of the current culture wars and wed the past and present together through both the personal and political as a way to better understand the world and demonstrate the importance of art within it.
�the modern sense of being a hero is shining a bright light on things that need to be seen.�
Having spent a year with this series was one of the most lovely and rewarding reading experiences of my life. Each book charmed me in its own way and I enjoyed how well each helped open up their respective seasons and allow me to feel each season more fully and more beautifully. As a favorite season of mine, I was particularly enraptured with Summer which was, perhaps, the most upbeat of the series and felt as warm as the summer days it depicts. Summer is the time of stretching out, of romance, of joy, and I was thrilled to share all these with this book. A moving story, a brilliant conclusion and an all around amazing read. Thank you Ali Smith, these books have been a real treasure to behold.
5/5
�Add together you plus me plus time plus space. What does that all make?
…It makes you and I more than just your or I…It makes us us.�
August 23, 2023
season by season, i spent a year with this series.
it feels like everyone should be rationed out a perfectly weather-appropriate read every few months.
and i for one can't quite believe it's over!
this series went off the rails of why i loved it for a bit, but in this one it was capital B Back, with lovable and awful and real characters (including some already-seen favorites) and striking seasonal imagery and beautiful sentiments about the everyday magic of life and love and people.
and less outright statement of its political aspirations. although still some of that.
you can't win them all. and i will miss these books!
bottom line: second-best book about the second-best season!
------------------
currently-reading updates
doing some seasonal reading
------------------
tbr review
happy first day of
it feels like everyone should be rationed out a perfectly weather-appropriate read every few months.
and i for one can't quite believe it's over!
this series went off the rails of why i loved it for a bit, but in this one it was capital B Back, with lovable and awful and real characters (including some already-seen favorites) and striking seasonal imagery and beautiful sentiments about the everyday magic of life and love and people.
and less outright statement of its political aspirations. although still some of that.
you can't win them all. and i will miss these books!
bottom line: second-best book about the second-best season!
------------------
currently-reading updates
doing some seasonal reading
------------------
tbr review
happy first day of
September 4, 2020
Light in darkness
Shall I compare Ali to a summer’s day?
A good one, from some other year than this;
Rough winds do shake us all and tempers fray,
At Summer’s cease, a hope-smith will be missed.
Whether Ali Smith shall turn out to be the hero of our literary times, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, the pages of her Seasonal Quartet must show. Perhaps it’s too soon to judge, but with four state-of-the-nation novels in under four years, is there another author whose attempt comes close?
Summer is a more subdued novel when compared to Spring’s exuberance, Winter’s phantasms or Autumn’s bite. It begins with a jittery, fractious energy, but settles to become more languorous and pensive; a controlled deceleration bringing this series to a gentle halt, ending with its characters gazing upwards to the sky.
This novel tones down the lexical fireworks and dials up the humanistic warmth. There’s clarity and a strong sense of symmetry in its dual time periods—connective stories of two seismic global events: WWII and the 2020 pandemic. The parallels drawn are solid ones, from treatment of foreigners and refugees, to correspondence across unbridgeable distances, to the light of everyday heroism in dark times.
The kindness of strangers is a strong theme—a generous view of human nature and innate compassion. Smith peoples her novels with characters who are good—fallible yes, but fundamentally big-hearted, kind and decent. Even after accounting for family resemblances, these characters can tend to bleed together a bit, as if Smith has two or three templates (the Artist, the Activist, etc) that she keeps returning to, inserting variations of the same person into different decades and settings to serve her ends.
Daniel Gluck is revealed to be the Quartet’s heart, or to put it another way, the axis around which the other characters orbit, sometimes colliding, sometimes not. Now aged 104, he has indeed seen many seasons and is present in both of the novel’s main timelines. As his mental acuity declines, his memories of the past intrude upon the present. Or maybe, given the many references to Einstein, time is bendier, less linear, than we think.
Smith’s project to write as contemporaneously as possible has proven its value beyond doubt. Summer has the dubious honour of being the first Covid novel—for us a mirror, for future readers a time capsule—and it is a reading experience set apart from endless news cycles or even essays, something only fiction can offer.
Summer is a mournful season according to Smith, one so lovely that we grieve its ending before it is even over. I’m sad there won’t be another of these nourishing, consoling novels to reflect 2021 back to us, whatever it may bring, and to remind us to supply our own light.
Shall I compare Ali to a summer’s day?
A good one, from some other year than this;
Rough winds do shake us all and tempers fray,
At Summer’s cease, a hope-smith will be missed.
Whether Ali Smith shall turn out to be the hero of our literary times, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, the pages of her Seasonal Quartet must show. Perhaps it’s too soon to judge, but with four state-of-the-nation novels in under four years, is there another author whose attempt comes close?
Summer is a more subdued novel when compared to Spring’s exuberance, Winter’s phantasms or Autumn’s bite. It begins with a jittery, fractious energy, but settles to become more languorous and pensive; a controlled deceleration bringing this series to a gentle halt, ending with its characters gazing upwards to the sky.
This novel tones down the lexical fireworks and dials up the humanistic warmth. There’s clarity and a strong sense of symmetry in its dual time periods—connective stories of two seismic global events: WWII and the 2020 pandemic. The parallels drawn are solid ones, from treatment of foreigners and refugees, to correspondence across unbridgeable distances, to the light of everyday heroism in dark times.
The kindness of strangers is a strong theme—a generous view of human nature and innate compassion. Smith peoples her novels with characters who are good—fallible yes, but fundamentally big-hearted, kind and decent. Even after accounting for family resemblances, these characters can tend to bleed together a bit, as if Smith has two or three templates (the Artist, the Activist, etc) that she keeps returning to, inserting variations of the same person into different decades and settings to serve her ends.
Daniel Gluck is revealed to be the Quartet’s heart, or to put it another way, the axis around which the other characters orbit, sometimes colliding, sometimes not. Now aged 104, he has indeed seen many seasons and is present in both of the novel’s main timelines. As his mental acuity declines, his memories of the past intrude upon the present. Or maybe, given the many references to Einstein, time is bendier, less linear, than we think.
Smith’s project to write as contemporaneously as possible has proven its value beyond doubt. Summer has the dubious honour of being the first Covid novel—for us a mirror, for future readers a time capsule—and it is a reading experience set apart from endless news cycles or even essays, something only fiction can offer.
Summer is a mournful season according to Smith, one so lovely that we grieve its ending before it is even over. I’m sad there won’t be another of these nourishing, consoling novels to reflect 2021 back to us, whatever it may bring, and to remind us to supply our own light.
August 23, 2020
The timely publishing gimmick of this quartet badly backfired when the pandemic arrived. You can imagine the scenario: Smith only has a few weeks before the book needs to be delivered and suddenly life as we've always known it dramatically changes. How can you write a series of novels about the state of the nation and leave out Covid and lockdown? So she has to hurriedly shoehorn it in. And, not surprisingly, the result is messy and unconvincing. Especially noticeable when George Floyd's name is thrown into the narrative without context like a random firecracker. The big problem is she didn't know what lockdown would entail, how the government would respond, what it would highlight about our society. Basically, this book needed at least another six months of gestation and work which it didn't get because of its gimmick. Hubris in action.
I understand why this, like Utopia Avenue, didn't make the Booker short list. As a stand alone novel it's inferior to the other three books in the quartet. It begins brilliantly. Ali Smith is fabulous at artistically channelling anger. Anger is an ugly emotion. Even when it's righteous and fully justified it can still make one recoil. And when there's anger melodrama is never far away. Everyone starts shouting. Figuratively, this can happen in a novel when an author wants us to get angry. Everything becomes a bit too manipulative and shouty. Ali Smith always manages to cleanse anger of all its ugly jarring notes and makes it a force of eloquence without recourse to melodrama, like a war dance.
I much prefer her anger to her optimism. There's a hippy in Ali Smith. She has a penchant for new-age feel-good whimsy. Like Daniel's Jewish sister in occupied France supposedly bringing back to life dead people by thinking about them. That scene seemed dangerously trite to me. Like blowing rainbow bubbles in the midst of a dead pillaged forest. There was a point when I began to tire of every character being essentially of the same mind. Her pro Brexit character for example was thoroughly unconvincing as a different point of view. We never feel Brexit is any more important to her than the colour of her postman's socks. In no way does she represent the ugly division which traumatised the UK as a community. I found myself longing for a larger canvas. Too often there was a sense of Smith preaching to the converted. If the world consisted only of Ali Smith characters there would be no racism, no social inequality, no global warming. But, disturbingly, I found myself wondering if it's a world I'd like to live in. We certainly don't want racism or global warming but maybe we do need Tories - to provide some creative opposition.
A lot of her craft Smith has learned from Muriel Spark, in particular, the seemingly casual way of constructing narrative as if she's wandering around in her dressing gown and carpet slippers still figuring out the plot while she's in the act of writing it. Like Spark, she's usually brilliant at arriving at a point where everything knocks together and creates a lighted circuit, but also like Spark, now and again this doesn't happen. The last third of this novel began to ramble for me, it ran out of track and ended up in a kind of overgrown siding. The scenery didn't change. It felt like Smith needed a new inspired character, someone who wasn't of the same mind as all the other characters. Instead the dreary Art conducted another dreary conversation with Charlotte; Iris returns with her big angry heart and starts to grate with her righteous political correctness and the exchange between Sacha and the incarcerated illegal immigrant, never convincing to begin with as this is where Smith feeds most of the lockdown stuff, becomes maudlin in its sentimentality. Shame this came out the summer of 2020 and not next year.
However, there's no question this quartet is a fabulous achievement and has catapulted Ali Smith up the world rankings as a novelist (just as the Cromwell novels did for Hilary Mantel). From a maverick, overly hit and miss writer she's become an author to get truly excited about.
I understand why this, like Utopia Avenue, didn't make the Booker short list. As a stand alone novel it's inferior to the other three books in the quartet. It begins brilliantly. Ali Smith is fabulous at artistically channelling anger. Anger is an ugly emotion. Even when it's righteous and fully justified it can still make one recoil. And when there's anger melodrama is never far away. Everyone starts shouting. Figuratively, this can happen in a novel when an author wants us to get angry. Everything becomes a bit too manipulative and shouty. Ali Smith always manages to cleanse anger of all its ugly jarring notes and makes it a force of eloquence without recourse to melodrama, like a war dance.
I much prefer her anger to her optimism. There's a hippy in Ali Smith. She has a penchant for new-age feel-good whimsy. Like Daniel's Jewish sister in occupied France supposedly bringing back to life dead people by thinking about them. That scene seemed dangerously trite to me. Like blowing rainbow bubbles in the midst of a dead pillaged forest. There was a point when I began to tire of every character being essentially of the same mind. Her pro Brexit character for example was thoroughly unconvincing as a different point of view. We never feel Brexit is any more important to her than the colour of her postman's socks. In no way does she represent the ugly division which traumatised the UK as a community. I found myself longing for a larger canvas. Too often there was a sense of Smith preaching to the converted. If the world consisted only of Ali Smith characters there would be no racism, no social inequality, no global warming. But, disturbingly, I found myself wondering if it's a world I'd like to live in. We certainly don't want racism or global warming but maybe we do need Tories - to provide some creative opposition.
A lot of her craft Smith has learned from Muriel Spark, in particular, the seemingly casual way of constructing narrative as if she's wandering around in her dressing gown and carpet slippers still figuring out the plot while she's in the act of writing it. Like Spark, she's usually brilliant at arriving at a point where everything knocks together and creates a lighted circuit, but also like Spark, now and again this doesn't happen. The last third of this novel began to ramble for me, it ran out of track and ended up in a kind of overgrown siding. The scenery didn't change. It felt like Smith needed a new inspired character, someone who wasn't of the same mind as all the other characters. Instead the dreary Art conducted another dreary conversation with Charlotte; Iris returns with her big angry heart and starts to grate with her righteous political correctness and the exchange between Sacha and the incarcerated illegal immigrant, never convincing to begin with as this is where Smith feeds most of the lockdown stuff, becomes maudlin in its sentimentality. Shame this came out the summer of 2020 and not next year.
However, there's no question this quartet is a fabulous achievement and has catapulted Ali Smith up the world rankings as a novelist (just as the Cromwell novels did for Hilary Mantel). From a maverick, overly hit and miss writer she's become an author to get truly excited about.
July 11, 2022
�-La justicia siempre venceráMe parece muy acertado el comentario que sobre la novela hizo Rebecca Makkai (The New York Times Book Review) y que se recoge en la contraportada de mi edición:
-Sí, pero eso depende totalmente de cómo definen la justicia aquellos que hacen las leyes.�
«Estas novelas, a caballo entre la inmediatez y la permanencia, lo personal y el alcance de un mundo que se inclina hacia el desastre, son las que leeremos en los próximos años como la literatura definitoria, aunque desconcertante, de una era indefinible y desconcertante.»Inmediatez y permanencia, lo colectivo y lo individual, presente, pasado y futuro, todo ello mezclado maravillosamente en este cuarteto de novelas que se termina (con mucha pena por mi parte) con “Verano�.
“El verano no es solo una historia alegre. Porque no hay una historia alegre sin oscuridad…�Se mantiene el mismo estilo fragmentario de las entregas anteriores, el mismo collage de pensamientos, diálogos y escenas, remotas y actuales, con las que nos recuerda que seguimos siendo los mismos que nos han llevado hasta aquí, que no vamos a cambiar, que tenemos que apañarnos con lo que hay, con nuestras vilezas y nuestras virtudes, manteniendo viva una esperanza de la que no nos podemos desprender (esa esperanza desesperada de la que hablaba en “Primavera�) por muy radical que sea nuestro escepticismo sobre el futuro que nos espera.
“…el verano siempre gira en torno a un final imaginado. Nos dirigimos a él como si significara algo. Siempre lo buscamos, siempre lo esperamos, todo el año nos dirigimos al verano como el horizonte que evoca la promesa del amanecer. Siempre buscamos la hoja abierta, la calidez abierta, la promesa de que pronto, un día, seremos capaces de recostarnos y que el verano nos ocurra; pronto, un día, el mundo nos tratará bien.�Ali Smith no se arredra ante ese futuro incierto y oscuro ni ante esta sociedad inclinada hacia el desastre y nos sigue alentando a no someternos, a luchar con todas nuestras fuerzas y con todas las armas que la nueva tecnología pone a nuestro alcance contra ese abismo al que parecemos abocados y ante el que la mayoría de la gente se encoge de hombros, y eso en el mejor de los casos. No son pocos los que directamente niegan el abismo o hasta lo ven con agrado —a quién le molesta unos pocos grados más de temperatura�. Suele ser la misma gente que afirma que todo aquel que no es capaz de vivir por sí mismo es porque es un vago, a los que no les importa que sus políticos desmantelen el estado del bienestar, les mientan o hasta les roben mientras bajen un poquito los impuestos y mantengan la esencia de los valores patrios, los que no culpan a los poderosos por como utilizan el poder para dominarnos mientras gritan a sus gobernantes que deporten a los inmigrantes pobres o que no se permita a otras religiones o culturas su desarrollo dentro de sus fronteras, los mismos que denuncian que se está asustando torticeramente a la gente, que esto del calentamiento global es un monumental engaño pergeñado por patéticos progres trasnochados.
“…en un sentido moderno, ser un héroe es enfocar una luz brillante a las cosas que necesitan ser vistas. Supongo que si alguien lo hace se producen consecuencias.�Brillantísima la luz que la autora enfoca sobre algunos de nuestros problemas con un llamamiento a la responsabilidad personal ante las situaciones injustas, frente a ese retorcimiento de las palabras que retuercen nuestra percepción de la realidad (se cita a Wittgenstein y su famosa cita: “Los límites de mi lenguaje son los límites de mi mundo�), frente a esa lluvia constante de fake news, en fin, frente a tanta desidia y tanta estupidez (no sé si no son contraproducentes los ejemplos de esta estulticia que la autora ha resaltado en cada entrega estacional: se hace muy difícil mantener alguna esperanza en un mundo donde telepredicadoras como la Mercy Bucks de la novela son capaces de arrastrar a tanta gente o saber que no es ninguna exageración imaginar a decenas de miles de personas pendientes de una página web que es una cámara fija sobre un Echo a la espera del oráculo que les cambie la vida…como dice la autora � Así ha sido siempre, desde que el verano mostró su verdor�).
En definitiva, Ali Smith nos viene a decir que quizás no podremos cambiar el mundo, pero sí mejorar la vida de algunas personas� y después, vaya usted a saber. Desde luego, Ali Smith es de esas escritoras que mejoran mi vida con sus novelas.
�(Arte) es el momento en que descubres y te cambia algo que encuentras, algo que te lleva tanto a tu interior como más allá de ti, y que hace que volvamos en sí. Es una conmoción que nos devuelve a nosotros mismos.�
P.S. Además de las continuas y habituales referencias a Shakespeare o a Dickens, en esta novela se homenajea, entre otros, a Fred Uhlman y, sobre todo, a Lorenza Mazzetti, directora de cine, pintora y novelista.
August 4, 2020
What a strange, tumultuous journey it's been over the past four years, but I'm so grateful that I've had Ali Smith's Seasonal novels by my side! Who could have predicted the many unsettling transformations that would take place in our social and political landscape when she began this ambitious writing project back in 2016? The highly contentious Brexit vote described in resulted in the UK officially leaving the EU this year. The conservative ex-mayor of London who was mocked in has now become the Prime Minister. Some of the immigrants being detained under the watchful gaze of a correction officer in have now been released because of the Covid-19 pandemic. It's so unique how the stories in these novels have been shaped by our immediate times and thus captured the sensibility, fears and divergent opinions of the country in its state of constant flux. As Iris remarks in this novel: “We're all walking the line now, the line between one era and another.� This makes these novels invaluable documents as they reflect this turbulent era. But they also join together to form a tapestry of relationships between specific characters introduced over the course of the previous novels, many of whom reappear in this final book in the series “Summer�.
This novel primarily focuses on the stories of Grace Greenlaw, a single mother and former actress who lives next door to her ex-husband Jeff, as well as their two children Sacha and Robert. As with the other novels, there are multiple conversations and oodles of pleasurable witty dialogue between the characters which results in a lot of humour and fun wordplay. Grace is also visited by Arthur and Charlotte from the novel “WԳٱ� who are continuing their 'Art in Nature' online project. They all go to interview Daniel Gluck from “Aܳٳܳ�. He's now 104 years old and still being visited by Elisabeth who is reading a novel she describes as “Sub Woolfian� about Rilke and Katherine Mansfield which was referred to in ٱԲ�. Although there are multiple references to events that occurred as recently as May and June of this year, the novel also looks back to previous seasons and periods of time such as the Hutchinson Internment Camp of WWII, a facility on the Isle of Man where German refugees and English residents with German or Italian heritage were held under suspicion throughout the war.
Read my full
You can also watch me discuss this novel with scenes from my local park here:
This novel primarily focuses on the stories of Grace Greenlaw, a single mother and former actress who lives next door to her ex-husband Jeff, as well as their two children Sacha and Robert. As with the other novels, there are multiple conversations and oodles of pleasurable witty dialogue between the characters which results in a lot of humour and fun wordplay. Grace is also visited by Arthur and Charlotte from the novel “WԳٱ� who are continuing their 'Art in Nature' online project. They all go to interview Daniel Gluck from “Aܳٳܳ�. He's now 104 years old and still being visited by Elisabeth who is reading a novel she describes as “Sub Woolfian� about Rilke and Katherine Mansfield which was referred to in ٱԲ�. Although there are multiple references to events that occurred as recently as May and June of this year, the novel also looks back to previous seasons and periods of time such as the Hutchinson Internment Camp of WWII, a facility on the Isle of Man where German refugees and English residents with German or Italian heritage were held under suspicion throughout the war.
Read my full
You can also watch me discuss this novel with scenes from my local park here:
March 10, 2021
Longlisted for the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction
Another wonderful book which completes the set of four seasons. I am a bit late to this one because my copy arrived while I was reading the Booker longlist and there are already several excellent detailed reviews here, so I may keep this one short and focus on personal impressions.
Those who have read the earlier books will recognise some of the characters (for a comprehensive list of connections see Gumble's Yard's review) but once again there are new ones in the foreground and some of the leading characters from the earlier books are only mentioned as part of others' stories, and others do not return at all - for all of the links Ali Smith is not a writer who likes neat resolved plots.
This one starts in Brighton, initially from the viewpoint of Sacha, a teenager interested in green issues, and her relationships with her mother Grace and younger brother Robert, a brilliant but wayward child who flirts with far right politics but is also interested in Albert Einstein. He superglues an hourglass to Sacha's hand and she is helped by Art and Charlotte (see Winter) who take her home and start a conversation which results in the family joining them on a trip to Suffolk.
Daniel Gluck (introduced in Autumn and now 104) gets a section which focuses on his war memories, when he was interned in a camp for German civilians on the Isle of Man. Other sections focus on Daniel's sister who worked with the resistance in France, Grace's memories of a theatre group trip to Suffolk in the 80s and Charlotte dealing with Covid lockdown in the Cornish house where much of Winter was set with Art's aunt Iris, the Greenham veteran and radical idealist.
Real people discussed include the Italian film maker Lorenza Mazzetti, Einstein and Dickens, and the Shakespeare references are from The Winter's Tale.
Once again the book ends on a fragile note of hope.
It will be very interesting to see what Ali Smith does next after this monumental quartet.
A few more recommended reviews:
Gumble's Yard, Fionnuala, Marchpane, Neil, Paul, Violet
Another wonderful book which completes the set of four seasons. I am a bit late to this one because my copy arrived while I was reading the Booker longlist and there are already several excellent detailed reviews here, so I may keep this one short and focus on personal impressions.
Those who have read the earlier books will recognise some of the characters (for a comprehensive list of connections see Gumble's Yard's review) but once again there are new ones in the foreground and some of the leading characters from the earlier books are only mentioned as part of others' stories, and others do not return at all - for all of the links Ali Smith is not a writer who likes neat resolved plots.
This one starts in Brighton, initially from the viewpoint of Sacha, a teenager interested in green issues, and her relationships with her mother Grace and younger brother Robert, a brilliant but wayward child who flirts with far right politics but is also interested in Albert Einstein. He superglues an hourglass to Sacha's hand and she is helped by Art and Charlotte (see Winter) who take her home and start a conversation which results in the family joining them on a trip to Suffolk.
Daniel Gluck (introduced in Autumn and now 104) gets a section which focuses on his war memories, when he was interned in a camp for German civilians on the Isle of Man. Other sections focus on Daniel's sister who worked with the resistance in France, Grace's memories of a theatre group trip to Suffolk in the 80s and Charlotte dealing with Covid lockdown in the Cornish house where much of Winter was set with Art's aunt Iris, the Greenham veteran and radical idealist.
Real people discussed include the Italian film maker Lorenza Mazzetti, Einstein and Dickens, and the Shakespeare references are from The Winter's Tale.
Once again the book ends on a fragile note of hope.
It will be very interesting to see what Ali Smith does next after this monumental quartet.
A few more recommended reviews:
Gumble's Yard, Fionnuala, Marchpane, Neil, Paul, Violet
December 28, 2020
Because summer isn’t just a merry tale. Because there’s no merry tale without the darkness. And summer’s surely really all about an imagined end.
The triumphant conclusion of Ali Smith's seasonal quarter ... or have we just imagined it's over?
For those keen to spot the repeated themes and motifs, here's my Seasonal Quartet bingo card
See my twin brother's review for the best take on this book and more detail on all the connections with the rest of the series: /review/show...
Some specific thoughts of my own below.
See him as he squats on Cromer beach doing sums, Charlie Chaplin with the brow of Shakespeare.
'Einstein' by John Maynard Keynes, New Statesman and Nation (1933), and the epigraph to
Impressively it seems Smith may have planned all along that Einstein - described by Keynes as combining Shakespeare and Chaplin - would bring these two key figures from the quartet together, so much so that she concealed a deus-ex-machina in Winter such that ein stein (a stone) could also bring many of the key characters physically together in Summer. [Although one cannot mention Keynes and Einstein without noting the awful anti-semitism in Keynes's notes after meeting the great man in Berlin in 1926, and it is odd Smith doesn't pick this up]
Smith may also have planned all along that the series would end with Daniel recalling his time in an internment camp in the 1940s (it is first mentioned in Autumn and I believe she said after writing Winter than Summer would feature the 1940s) as an echo of present day immigration detainees (following the theme of Spring). But she can't possibly have known how that would also so neatly mirror the lockdown we'd all experience in 2020, bringing her signature blend of past and present to a brilliant conclusion. [Some references to Spanish flu do feel a little more forced.]
Who am I then? What am I doing here? This is not my country or my home; I have no one left in the whole world, everybody’s dead.
Lorenza Mazzetti, - translation by
A quote (not in the novel) from the female artist who features in Summer and one that in one sense could mirror the experience of the 104 year old Daniel Gluck still mourning the only two people he really loved, (the real-life) Pauline Boty and his sister Hannah, whose story, hinted at in Autumn, we learn in more detail here both from his perspective and things he could not have known.
And yet, wonderfully, the aforementioned stone actually leaves Daniel at the end of the novel living with his son and having met his sister's great grandson, who he mistakes for his sister.
At the same time she’s made it clear to both that she’s not really available and can’t commit for longer; she’s told them about Gordon Stone, her longterm boyfriend at home.
(In reality there’s no home and there’s no such person. Gordonstoun is the name of a posh school in Scotland that her mother used to work at before she met her father. Prince Charles went there.)
A missed opportunity. A rather out-of-context Smithian pun - but one that fails to mention the history of Gordonstoun: a school that started in the 1930s for both teachers and pupils who came to the UK as refugees from Nazi Germany, following the model of Beltane School in Wimbledon.
Die Schule startete als Schule für Flüchtlingskinder und für aus Deutschland geflüchtete Lehrer, vergleichbar etwa der Beltane School in Wimbledon (London) oder Stoatley Rough School
(German wikipedia)
That could have led to an exploration of Beltane School - founded by Ernst Bulova, another refugee from the Nazis in the 1930. But when the war began he was himself placed into internment by the British government, and later, like Einstein, left the UK for the US.
Beltane School was in turn turned into an internment camp used after the war for some Nazi prisoners but also, incredibly in the same camp, for holocaust survivors:
The omission of this fascinating story is a shame as it would have provided another Wimbledon link for my bingo card, which I've consequently had to amend (postcards have also gone and the mother here turns out to not really tick the dotty box). But for those keen to play along - here it is:
Millions and millions, all across the country and all across the world, saw the lying, and the mistreatments of people and the planet, and were vocal about it, on marches, in protests, by writing, by voting, by talking, by activism, on the radio, on TV, via social media, tweet after tweet, page after page.
Overall - a very neat conclusion to the quartet.
My own reservation is that although the political campaigning of the novel is admirable in many respects, it does have the one-sided, simplistic, bubble nature of social media (tweet after tweet), as well as some unpleasant abuse of the prime minister and his chief advisor, an approach to political debate which is, I believe, more part of the problem than part of the solution to our current divides, so 4 stars.
The triumphant conclusion of Ali Smith's seasonal quarter ... or have we just imagined it's over?
For those keen to spot the repeated themes and motifs, here's my Seasonal Quartet bingo card
See my twin brother's review for the best take on this book and more detail on all the connections with the rest of the series: /review/show...
Some specific thoughts of my own below.
See him as he squats on Cromer beach doing sums, Charlie Chaplin with the brow of Shakespeare.
'Einstein' by John Maynard Keynes, New Statesman and Nation (1933), and the epigraph to
Impressively it seems Smith may have planned all along that Einstein - described by Keynes as combining Shakespeare and Chaplin - would bring these two key figures from the quartet together, so much so that she concealed a deus-ex-machina in Winter such that ein stein (a stone) could also bring many of the key characters physically together in Summer. [Although one cannot mention Keynes and Einstein without noting the awful anti-semitism in Keynes's notes after meeting the great man in Berlin in 1926, and it is odd Smith doesn't pick this up]
Smith may also have planned all along that the series would end with Daniel recalling his time in an internment camp in the 1940s (it is first mentioned in Autumn and I believe she said after writing Winter than Summer would feature the 1940s) as an echo of present day immigration detainees (following the theme of Spring). But she can't possibly have known how that would also so neatly mirror the lockdown we'd all experience in 2020, bringing her signature blend of past and present to a brilliant conclusion. [Some references to Spanish flu do feel a little more forced.]
Who am I then? What am I doing here? This is not my country or my home; I have no one left in the whole world, everybody’s dead.
Lorenza Mazzetti, - translation by
A quote (not in the novel) from the female artist who features in Summer and one that in one sense could mirror the experience of the 104 year old Daniel Gluck still mourning the only two people he really loved, (the real-life) Pauline Boty and his sister Hannah, whose story, hinted at in Autumn, we learn in more detail here both from his perspective and things he could not have known.
And yet, wonderfully, the aforementioned stone actually leaves Daniel at the end of the novel living with his son and having met his sister's great grandson, who he mistakes for his sister.
At the same time she’s made it clear to both that she’s not really available and can’t commit for longer; she’s told them about Gordon Stone, her longterm boyfriend at home.
(In reality there’s no home and there’s no such person. Gordonstoun is the name of a posh school in Scotland that her mother used to work at before she met her father. Prince Charles went there.)
A missed opportunity. A rather out-of-context Smithian pun - but one that fails to mention the history of Gordonstoun: a school that started in the 1930s for both teachers and pupils who came to the UK as refugees from Nazi Germany, following the model of Beltane School in Wimbledon.
Die Schule startete als Schule für Flüchtlingskinder und für aus Deutschland geflüchtete Lehrer, vergleichbar etwa der Beltane School in Wimbledon (London) oder Stoatley Rough School
(German wikipedia)
That could have led to an exploration of Beltane School - founded by Ernst Bulova, another refugee from the Nazis in the 1930. But when the war began he was himself placed into internment by the British government, and later, like Einstein, left the UK for the US.
Beltane School was in turn turned into an internment camp used after the war for some Nazi prisoners but also, incredibly in the same camp, for holocaust survivors:
The omission of this fascinating story is a shame as it would have provided another Wimbledon link for my bingo card, which I've consequently had to amend (postcards have also gone and the mother here turns out to not really tick the dotty box). But for those keen to play along - here it is:
Millions and millions, all across the country and all across the world, saw the lying, and the mistreatments of people and the planet, and were vocal about it, on marches, in protests, by writing, by voting, by talking, by activism, on the radio, on TV, via social media, tweet after tweet, page after page.
Overall - a very neat conclusion to the quartet.
My own reservation is that although the political campaigning of the novel is admirable in many respects, it does have the one-sided, simplistic, bubble nature of social media (tweet after tweet), as well as some unpleasant abuse of the prime minister and his chief advisor, an approach to political debate which is, I believe, more part of the problem than part of the solution to our current divides, so 4 stars.
June 28, 2020
‘Summer is a merry tale out of a sad one�. Well we live in hope it’s a merry one.
Well, you either like Ali Smith’s style or you don’t but what I do like about her books is that they are different and thoughtful. This is the final book in the seasonal quartet and I really wish I’d read them back to back because they are instalments of one book. There are recurring characters both real and fictional, a recurring organisation in S4A4 with the same themes running throughout. These include political comments (often swipes rather than takes!) current events, art and literature.
I really like the start of this one with the Greenlaw family in Brighton which is darkly funny and wickedly clever in places. It is set in the context of a post Brexit and Covid19 world and I like how one of the messages is that of hope once this is beaten. The first part introduces the theme of Space and Time as 13 year old Robert is fascinated by Einstein and Words as a character is composing a modern lexicography. Some of that is very funny. I love Grace Greenlaw’s reflections on a marvellous and immortal summer she spends in Suffolk in 1989 where she is acting in plays. Grace reminds us that we are always heading towards summer (well I certainly am!) but it’s a slippery season and it’s transient. I also love the letters Sacha writes to Hero in the detention centre from Spring in which she vividly describes our summer bird visitor - the swift. Swifts are also summer to me and so this resonates. I log their arrival like Sacha (usually 6/5 - 12/5 here), observe and marvel at their aeronautic acrobatics and weep at their departure in early August as they head back to Africa. They are the most incredible birds as Sacha demonstrates vividly. I like the art theme which this time features Lorenza Mozzetti and the literature with Shakespeare’s Winters Tale, Dickens and Keats.
However, the book lost me in the middle although I can see how it links to the detention centres which is a focus of Spring and the characters are from Autumn but it does find its way back again in the final third and you understand how it relates to the first section.
Overall, it’s clever and I really like parts of it although Autumn remains my favourite of the four. I will read them again but this time as one rather than separately then I think the links between all four will have deeper meaning.
With thanks to NetGalley and Penguin General UK, Hamish Hamilton for the ARC.
Well, you either like Ali Smith’s style or you don’t but what I do like about her books is that they are different and thoughtful. This is the final book in the seasonal quartet and I really wish I’d read them back to back because they are instalments of one book. There are recurring characters both real and fictional, a recurring organisation in S4A4 with the same themes running throughout. These include political comments (often swipes rather than takes!) current events, art and literature.
I really like the start of this one with the Greenlaw family in Brighton which is darkly funny and wickedly clever in places. It is set in the context of a post Brexit and Covid19 world and I like how one of the messages is that of hope once this is beaten. The first part introduces the theme of Space and Time as 13 year old Robert is fascinated by Einstein and Words as a character is composing a modern lexicography. Some of that is very funny. I love Grace Greenlaw’s reflections on a marvellous and immortal summer she spends in Suffolk in 1989 where she is acting in plays. Grace reminds us that we are always heading towards summer (well I certainly am!) but it’s a slippery season and it’s transient. I also love the letters Sacha writes to Hero in the detention centre from Spring in which she vividly describes our summer bird visitor - the swift. Swifts are also summer to me and so this resonates. I log their arrival like Sacha (usually 6/5 - 12/5 here), observe and marvel at their aeronautic acrobatics and weep at their departure in early August as they head back to Africa. They are the most incredible birds as Sacha demonstrates vividly. I like the art theme which this time features Lorenza Mozzetti and the literature with Shakespeare’s Winters Tale, Dickens and Keats.
However, the book lost me in the middle although I can see how it links to the detention centres which is a focus of Spring and the characters are from Autumn but it does find its way back again in the final third and you understand how it relates to the first section.
Overall, it’s clever and I really like parts of it although Autumn remains my favourite of the four. I will read them again but this time as one rather than separately then I think the links between all four will have deeper meaning.
With thanks to NetGalley and Penguin General UK, Hamish Hamilton for the ARC.
September 15, 2020
In early May I happened to see that the publisher of this work had just received its final edits. That means Ali Smith didn’t have much Time to add the coronavirus pandemic to her manuscript. For the most part (excepting the teenaged Sacha’s correspondence) I think she got it to work, especially Charlotte’s self-imposed, depressive isolation in Iris’s house. Almost certainly Smith would’ve excised things she’d already written, but since this volume is longer than the others, perhaps it was more a process of tweaking and adding, and not much subtracting. Its revisions still would’ve taken her some time.
Speaking of Time, Einstein is a conduit between Charlotte of and Robert, another of Smith’s precocious children. In some ways their relationship reflects Daniel and Elisabeth’s in . Postcards were connective clues in the other books, but if there’s one here I missed it: Maybe it was burned to ashes before it was posted. No matter; plenty of other connections make their way through Time, including the Hepworth.
My favorite parts of the book were of the past, though of a more difficult Time: Daniel’s story of internment on the Isle of Man with his German-born father and the German-born/-descended artists; Hannah’s story of resistance in occupied France. I hated to leave Hannah; I imagine her still wandering the outskirts, quietly, secretly, in danger, proffering a hand to those who need it.
*
One day I hope to reread these four books straight through. That Time is not now. But after writing the above, I flip through Autumn for references to Hannah. Unrelated to her, I see the words “Spanish flu.� Autumn was published in 2016. Ali Smith might not be prescient, but she does know how Nature and Time work. Seasons are cyclical, so why not my rereading.
Speaking of Time, Einstein is a conduit between Charlotte of and Robert, another of Smith’s precocious children. In some ways their relationship reflects Daniel and Elisabeth’s in . Postcards were connective clues in the other books, but if there’s one here I missed it: Maybe it was burned to ashes before it was posted. No matter; plenty of other connections make their way through Time, including the Hepworth.
My favorite parts of the book were of the past, though of a more difficult Time: Daniel’s story of internment on the Isle of Man with his German-born father and the German-born/-descended artists; Hannah’s story of resistance in occupied France. I hated to leave Hannah; I imagine her still wandering the outskirts, quietly, secretly, in danger, proffering a hand to those who need it.
*
One day I hope to reread these four books straight through. That Time is not now. But after writing the above, I flip through Autumn for references to Hannah. Unrelated to her, I see the words “Spanish flu.� Autumn was published in 2016. Ali Smith might not be prescient, but she does know how Nature and Time work. Seasons are cyclical, so why not my rereading.
August 13, 2020
Every year since 2016, Ali Smith has delighted readers with annual instalments of the seasonal quartet. Autumn, Winter, Spring featured among my favourite reads in their respective publishing years. I was greatly anticipating reading this last instalment. Many thanks to Penguin UK for approving me for this eARC.
Smith continues to bewitch us with her language play, observations, quirky characters, historical recollections, thoughts on art, the environment, political climate. Truthfully, the novel sagged a bit in the middle and there were some bits that didn’t contribute much and left me asking questions.
Also, nitpicking here, while it serves to propel the narrative, it didn’t make sense that young people, not even relatives, would visit Daniel Gluck, now 104 year old, during the COVID lockdown.
Despite my small discontents, this novel is on another level.
My favourite parts were those about Grace Greenlaw, a single mother of two precocious, know-it-all kids - Sacha, a sixteen-year-old environmentalist, and her brother, Robert, a moulding, inquisitive, creative, very intelligent, and antagonistic thirteen year old. I also loved Sacha’s letters to Hero, a Vietnamese refugee who was held in a detention centre.
As in the previous seasons, we are introduced to a (relatively) unknown female artist, this time, it’s the Italian Lorenza Mazzetti, a director, writer, painter. Her 1956 film “Together� is referenced several times. I plan to watch it this evening. If you’re interested, here’s a link: . (It turns out this link works only for UK residents)
There is a lot to unpack in this novel. Others have written much more eloquent, detailed reviews.
If you love smart, experimental yet accessible writing, you must read this novel and the entire seasonal quartet. Individually, they’re exceptional. Put together, they’re a masterpiece.
Smith continues to bewitch us with her language play, observations, quirky characters, historical recollections, thoughts on art, the environment, political climate. Truthfully, the novel sagged a bit in the middle and there were some bits that didn’t contribute much and left me asking questions.
Also, nitpicking here, while it serves to propel the narrative, it didn’t make sense that young people, not even relatives, would visit Daniel Gluck, now 104 year old, during the COVID lockdown.
Despite my small discontents, this novel is on another level.
My favourite parts were those about Grace Greenlaw, a single mother of two precocious, know-it-all kids - Sacha, a sixteen-year-old environmentalist, and her brother, Robert, a moulding, inquisitive, creative, very intelligent, and antagonistic thirteen year old. I also loved Sacha’s letters to Hero, a Vietnamese refugee who was held in a detention centre.
As in the previous seasons, we are introduced to a (relatively) unknown female artist, this time, it’s the Italian Lorenza Mazzetti, a director, writer, painter. Her 1956 film “Together� is referenced several times. I plan to watch it this evening. If you’re interested, here’s a link: . (It turns out this link works only for UK residents)
There is a lot to unpack in this novel. Others have written much more eloquent, detailed reviews.
If you love smart, experimental yet accessible writing, you must read this novel and the entire seasonal quartet. Individually, they’re exceptional. Put together, they’re a masterpiece.
March 8, 2022
3.5 rounded down
SPOILERS AHEAD. THESE BOOKS SHOULD BE READ IN ORDER.
Autumn was my favorite, then Winter, Spring, Summer in that order. Summer was a disappointment.
What I liked best
Hannah's story. Her devotion to saving fellow Jews in occupied France, traveling to rural cemeteries to get names and dates from gravestones. That, for me, was the strongest, most centered writing. Her commitment and sacrifice. Leaving her daughter with the couple that took them in.
Hannah's story would have been a standout for me no matter what -- but reading it as Putin invaded Ukraine and during the ongoing horror, reading it as Putin had a missile fired on Ukraine's Holocaust memorial, made it more impactful for me. I think every reader can't help but wonder how this entire ambitious work will age. Hannah's section is now relevant in a new context.
The WWII internment camp on the Isle of Man, present-day immigrants, the detention centers and more come to mind as I continue to digest the quartet. Coincidence: the invasion happened while I was finishing Summer. Ironic, given the nature and method of this unique work. Timing is everything.
I appreciate how she worked bits about covid-19 into Summer: not a lot but some politics, masks, and how she used it to impact Daniel and the detainees.
The swifts.
Charlie Chaplin, whose appearances throughout the quartet seem perfectly chosen and placed.
David Copperfield. Shakespeare new and redux.
Hepworth. Lorenza Mazetti's work.
Charlotte, except regarding Robert.
What I liked less
The new characters: Grace and Sacha. Grace's ex and Ashley, who was most interesting of the four in some ways and well woven into the main frame. Robert discussed below. For me, the weakest contemporary characters, as a group, in the quartet.
The jamming in of too many references. Taken as a quartet they're beautiful. Overused in Summer, I thought it spread the book thin.
What I didn't like
The character of Robert. It's entirely possible, maybe even likely, I missed the point. His arc was wholly unbelievable and out of place, for me. Time spent on him playing torture games and inflicting pain and suffering upon, torturing his sister. At that point he seemed to me a socio- or psychopath.
I don't understand what alchemized the violent impulses and sadism out of Robert. Whether it was Charlotte's spell, Einstein's, puberty. I wasn't certain if his appreciation of Einstein and the beauty of science, the ugliness toward him as a Jew, Robert's desire to trace Einstein's steps on the road trip and look up at the sky. Some empathy displayed. The transition didn't make sense to me. Again, I'm well aware it could be a result of me not understanding Smith's point and purpose with Robert. I welcome any and all explanations.
⭐⭐�
I never expected things to be tied up in a bow; I wouldn't have wanted that. But I expected more from Summer. I hoped to love it as much or more than Autumn, or on a par wtih Winter and Spring. Overall I admire the quality of Ali Smith's writing as well as the concept and ambition of the quartet. Autumn will likely make the list, and it will be a list (!), of my Favorite Books of 2022.
While I'm sure I didn't understand some of it, I loved most of it. And appreciate the art and craft with which Smith assembled this ambitious, seminal work, returned to some stories, added depth and surprises and left others floating like Tacita's clouds. I'm interested in how the quartet ages, intend to read it again in five or ten years. And I will definitely read more Ali Smith.
SPOILERS AHEAD. THESE BOOKS SHOULD BE READ IN ORDER.
Autumn was my favorite, then Winter, Spring, Summer in that order. Summer was a disappointment.
What I liked best
Hannah's story. Her devotion to saving fellow Jews in occupied France, traveling to rural cemeteries to get names and dates from gravestones. That, for me, was the strongest, most centered writing. Her commitment and sacrifice. Leaving her daughter with the couple that took them in.
Hannah's story would have been a standout for me no matter what -- but reading it as Putin invaded Ukraine and during the ongoing horror, reading it as Putin had a missile fired on Ukraine's Holocaust memorial, made it more impactful for me. I think every reader can't help but wonder how this entire ambitious work will age. Hannah's section is now relevant in a new context.
The WWII internment camp on the Isle of Man, present-day immigrants, the detention centers and more come to mind as I continue to digest the quartet. Coincidence: the invasion happened while I was finishing Summer. Ironic, given the nature and method of this unique work. Timing is everything.
I appreciate how she worked bits about covid-19 into Summer: not a lot but some politics, masks, and how she used it to impact Daniel and the detainees.
The swifts.
Charlie Chaplin, whose appearances throughout the quartet seem perfectly chosen and placed.
David Copperfield. Shakespeare new and redux.
Hepworth. Lorenza Mazetti's work.
Charlotte, except regarding Robert.
What I liked less
The new characters: Grace and Sacha. Grace's ex and Ashley, who was most interesting of the four in some ways and well woven into the main frame. Robert discussed below. For me, the weakest contemporary characters, as a group, in the quartet.
The jamming in of too many references. Taken as a quartet they're beautiful. Overused in Summer, I thought it spread the book thin.
What I didn't like
The character of Robert. It's entirely possible, maybe even likely, I missed the point. His arc was wholly unbelievable and out of place, for me. Time spent on him playing torture games and inflicting pain and suffering upon, torturing his sister. At that point he seemed to me a socio- or psychopath.
I don't understand what alchemized the violent impulses and sadism out of Robert. Whether it was Charlotte's spell, Einstein's, puberty. I wasn't certain if his appreciation of Einstein and the beauty of science, the ugliness toward him as a Jew, Robert's desire to trace Einstein's steps on the road trip and look up at the sky. Some empathy displayed. The transition didn't make sense to me. Again, I'm well aware it could be a result of me not understanding Smith's point and purpose with Robert. I welcome any and all explanations.
⭐⭐�
I never expected things to be tied up in a bow; I wouldn't have wanted that. But I expected more from Summer. I hoped to love it as much or more than Autumn, or on a par wtih Winter and Spring. Overall I admire the quality of Ali Smith's writing as well as the concept and ambition of the quartet. Autumn will likely make the list, and it will be a list (!), of my Favorite Books of 2022.
While I'm sure I didn't understand some of it, I loved most of it. And appreciate the art and craft with which Smith assembled this ambitious, seminal work, returned to some stories, added depth and surprises and left others floating like Tacita's clouds. I'm interested in how the quartet ages, intend to read it again in five or ten years. And I will definitely read more Ali Smith.
July 5, 2024
Summer is the fourth installment of Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet. It is the third in the series I’ve read and I love it just as much as Winter and Spring. There is so much I love and appreciate about Ali Smith’s wit, observations, and writing style. I am blown away by how she can layer a story and connect characters.
There are several overarching themes explored in Summer including, the political cultivation of indifference, climate change, and isolation. Summer is divided into three parts, each exploring isolation in its own setting. Part 1: isolation of people deemed illegal immigrants held in a detention center. Part 2: isolation of people living in England of German ancestry in internment camps during WWII. Part 3: isolation due to illness and the Covid pandemic. The first two parts focus on being locked up, and the third on being in lock down.
Art, Charlotte, and Aunt Iris make a return appearance. We meet new characters: Grace (mom), Robert (son), Sacha (daughter) along with Grace’s ex’s new girlfriend (Ashley). There is Daniel (interned during WWII and Hero (detained). There are many great quotes, and here’s my first: “I have a vision that the modern sense of being a hero is like shining a bright light on things that need to be seen.�
Very much in line with the previous books in the quartet, art in all forms play a meaningful role in the narrative. The violin, sculpture, paintings, photography, films, and the written word. The multiple meanings of words is explored and enriches the narrative. Two characters lose their voice or choose not to speak: a one time singer upon his internment and Ashley after writing her research paper on language. Next great quote: “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.�
There is definitely a statement on who has a voice and who is voiceless. This is evident in terms of politics, homelessness, climate change, the pandemic, and detaining/interning. There is also the return of Charlie Chaplin and his portrayals in silent movies. We are introduced to a new film legend, Lorenza Mazzetti, who directed two brilliant silent films. She is distantly related to Albert Einstein. Einstein is a major influence in the lives of several characters, but most noticeably, young Robert. Charlotte’s kindness to young Robert is so very touching. Robert’s relationship with his sister, Sacha, is so very unique and special. I enjoyed every interaction amongst and between these characters.
Activism is front and center in Summer, both overt and covert. Aunt Iris, Charlotte, and Sacha are all activists in their own way and are very inspiring. Sacha has pent up anger and resentment at the “adults� of the world for “giving the next generation the responsibility to reverse climate change, but no power to do it.� I LOVE that Greta is mentioned! Her look conveys a thousand words and emotions.
Another quote that crosses themes is, “But now maybe we will realize that we have to stop being poisonous to each other and the world.� Covid impacts the issues of the novel. Homeless are given shelter and detainees are released after the pandemic is rampant. Why must kindness be withheld until there is a global pandemic? Ali Smith not only explores the multiple meanings and manifestations of Summer, but also of masks. The masks people wear to hide their true intentions, the masks of politicians, the masks thespians wear as theater performers, and of course the masks (and lack of masks) to prevent the spread of Covid.
All of the characters and storylines come together at the end. I absolutely loved the ending. I can go on and on about how much I love this book and the three books I’ve read in the Quartet thus far. I will leave you with three quotes that spoke to me. I hope they speak to you, too.
“Metamorphosis seems like a powerful act of accusation against the daily grind that makes us indifferent to past, present and future injustice.�
“A book should be an axe to break the frozen sea inside you.�
“Time spent exchanging life and times with complete or comparative strangers can sometimes work out rather well. In some cases, it can be even life-changing.�
There are several overarching themes explored in Summer including, the political cultivation of indifference, climate change, and isolation. Summer is divided into three parts, each exploring isolation in its own setting. Part 1: isolation of people deemed illegal immigrants held in a detention center. Part 2: isolation of people living in England of German ancestry in internment camps during WWII. Part 3: isolation due to illness and the Covid pandemic. The first two parts focus on being locked up, and the third on being in lock down.
Art, Charlotte, and Aunt Iris make a return appearance. We meet new characters: Grace (mom), Robert (son), Sacha (daughter) along with Grace’s ex’s new girlfriend (Ashley). There is Daniel (interned during WWII and Hero (detained). There are many great quotes, and here’s my first: “I have a vision that the modern sense of being a hero is like shining a bright light on things that need to be seen.�
Very much in line with the previous books in the quartet, art in all forms play a meaningful role in the narrative. The violin, sculpture, paintings, photography, films, and the written word. The multiple meanings of words is explored and enriches the narrative. Two characters lose their voice or choose not to speak: a one time singer upon his internment and Ashley after writing her research paper on language. Next great quote: “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.�
There is definitely a statement on who has a voice and who is voiceless. This is evident in terms of politics, homelessness, climate change, the pandemic, and detaining/interning. There is also the return of Charlie Chaplin and his portrayals in silent movies. We are introduced to a new film legend, Lorenza Mazzetti, who directed two brilliant silent films. She is distantly related to Albert Einstein. Einstein is a major influence in the lives of several characters, but most noticeably, young Robert. Charlotte’s kindness to young Robert is so very touching. Robert’s relationship with his sister, Sacha, is so very unique and special. I enjoyed every interaction amongst and between these characters.
Activism is front and center in Summer, both overt and covert. Aunt Iris, Charlotte, and Sacha are all activists in their own way and are very inspiring. Sacha has pent up anger and resentment at the “adults� of the world for “giving the next generation the responsibility to reverse climate change, but no power to do it.� I LOVE that Greta is mentioned! Her look conveys a thousand words and emotions.
Another quote that crosses themes is, “But now maybe we will realize that we have to stop being poisonous to each other and the world.� Covid impacts the issues of the novel. Homeless are given shelter and detainees are released after the pandemic is rampant. Why must kindness be withheld until there is a global pandemic? Ali Smith not only explores the multiple meanings and manifestations of Summer, but also of masks. The masks people wear to hide their true intentions, the masks of politicians, the masks thespians wear as theater performers, and of course the masks (and lack of masks) to prevent the spread of Covid.
All of the characters and storylines come together at the end. I absolutely loved the ending. I can go on and on about how much I love this book and the three books I’ve read in the Quartet thus far. I will leave you with three quotes that spoke to me. I hope they speak to you, too.
“Metamorphosis seems like a powerful act of accusation against the daily grind that makes us indifferent to past, present and future injustice.�
“A book should be an axe to break the frozen sea inside you.�
“Time spent exchanging life and times with complete or comparative strangers can sometimes work out rather well. In some cases, it can be even life-changing.�
June 20, 2020
Summer is the final part of a quartet of novels. Over the last 5 days, I haven’t read just Summer, but I actually read, back to back, Autumn (for the fourth time), Winter (for the third time), Spring (for the second time) and THEN Summer for the first time. I don’t say this in order to boast, but more because I see the quartet as a single work and I think it is best experienced as a single work: I would definitely not recommend reading Summer standalone, but I would 100% recommend reading all four parts and reading them as close together as possible.
I have decided not to mention anything about the plot of Summer here. For anyone who has read the previous parts of the overall quartet, seeing how the story unfolds and how links are formed back to earlier parts is a lot of fun and I wouldn’t want to spoil that. Instead, I am just going to give some thoughts on how Summer encapsulates some key ideas in the books.
Summer is a fitting finale to a wonderful set of books. It brings back several characters from earlier parts (most notably Autumn and Winter - the minimal cross over with Spring almost suggests that Smith conceived Spring and Summer together as follow-ons). It continues several motifs (opening line drawn from Dickens, Charlie Chaplin movies, Shakespeare plays, a 20th-century female artist whose works play a part in the story etc.). But, more fundamentally than those, it draws together the themes that have been weaving around one another throughout the first three parts of the work.
Here are my favourite quotes from each part of the quartet:
It’s about history, and being neighbours, Elisabeth said. (Autumn)
Depends whether you think there’s a them and an us, Iris says, or just an us. (Winter)
What if, the girl says. Instead of saying, this border divides these places. We said, this border unites these places. This border holds together these two really interesting different places. What if we declared border crossings places where, listen, when you crossed them, you yourself became doubly possible. (Spring)
It makes you and I more than just you or I, Hannah says. It makes us us. (Summer)
These are not my favourite quotes because of any literary merit they may have, but because they capture key ideas from each book. Overall, I think the Seasonal Quartet is a cry for tolerance and acceptance. It was Jesus, the founder of the Christian religion, who said we should all “love your neighbour as yourself� and then, when challenged about the definition of “neighbour�, told a story (The Good Samaritan) to show that my neighbour is anyone I come across who could benefit from my compassion. Jesus also said that a key commandment of Scripture, in his view, was that we should “love your neighbour as yourself�.
Why do I mention this in the context of these books? These are not Christian books, so why turn to the Christian religion for quotes? Fundamentally, it feels to me that these ideas underpin what Ali Smith is writing about. Yes, the books have a political slant to them and that political slant will not be to everyone’s taste, but I think that if you can dig underneath the politics, the underlying message is about how we treat one another and how we treat ourselves.
In my reading, the first three books leave me with thoughts about neighbours/community (Autumn), self (Winter) and countries (Spring). And then Summer draws these together to make sure we know that all three are required if we are to make progress as human beings. And that we have to let go of the past in order to move forward into a better future. These aren't necessarily new ideas, but this set of four books makes you want to do something about it. Let me explain.
In Autumn, as well as the quote above, Elisabeth as a young child says about talking to Daniel ”Here are the questions I would ask him 1 what is it like to have neighbours 2 what is it like to be a neighbour�. A key thread running through Autumn is the relationship between neighbours Elisabeth and Daniel. The book as a whole feels very much that it challenges us about how we treat those around us. The Brexit focus makes it a book about local communities and their reaction to the votes and the schisms revealed. I finished Autumn very much thinking about local community, my neighbourhood.
In Winter, we follow follow several characters on a voyage of self-discovery. Lux plays a key role in shining a light (hence her name) into people’s lives. It becomes about transformation of the individual and we read quotes such as:
That’s what winter is: an exercise in remembering how to still yourself then how to come pliantly back to life again.
Or
You never stop being yourself on the inside, whatever age people think you are by looking at you from the outside.
Then, in Spring, the focus shifts and becomes more international. We read, along with the quote above, about borders and whether they can be broken down:
Think about it, Paddy says. Ireland in uproar. Brand new union. Brand new border. Brand new ancient Irish civil unrest. Don’t tell me this isn’t relevant all over again in its brand new same old way.
And that it�
…wouldn’t take long, no time at all, for those fairly new separate little hedge sprigs next to each other in their boxes, they were more than sprigs now, bushes already, to form into just the one hedge instead of all the separate plants they’d been planted as.
So, the first three volumes of the quartet tell us about local communities, individuals and countries.
Summer provides the perfect culmination to this set of books. On just page 16, it lays its cards on the table by quoting from Hannah Arendt
Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history
Then the artist in focus for this instalment is Lorenza Mazzetti and, in particular, a film she made called “Together�. There are significant portions of the book that focus on internment (a topic that has been present through the whole quartet as a sort of antithesis of forgiveness and acceptance). And alongside the quote above (It makes us us) it is clear we are reading a plea for individuals and nations to break from the past and head into a future where barriers have been broken down.
If you want to see some more details about the actual book, take a look at the excellent reviews already written by my friends Paul and Gumble’s Yard. I haven’t talked about Albert Einstein (and the significance of “ein Stein�), for example. And I haven’t said anything about Sacha and Robert, the return of several characters from Autumn and Spring and the way two of them get together. And I haven’t mentioned how we find out who someone’s great-grandmother is. Read these two reviews, but first, and more importantly, READ THE BOOKS!
Gumble’s Yard
Paul
In particular, as highlighted in Paul’s review, Gumble’s Yard’s review illustrates the connections between the four books in the quartet and collecting these as you read through the whole set is enormous fun.
Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet is an incredible achievement. Reading all four books together as a single work of art is, I believe, the best way to appreciate the enormity of what Smith has created. I can’t recommend that you read Summer. I can only recommend that you read Autumn, then Winter, then Spring and THEN Summer.
I have decided not to mention anything about the plot of Summer here. For anyone who has read the previous parts of the overall quartet, seeing how the story unfolds and how links are formed back to earlier parts is a lot of fun and I wouldn’t want to spoil that. Instead, I am just going to give some thoughts on how Summer encapsulates some key ideas in the books.
Summer is a fitting finale to a wonderful set of books. It brings back several characters from earlier parts (most notably Autumn and Winter - the minimal cross over with Spring almost suggests that Smith conceived Spring and Summer together as follow-ons). It continues several motifs (opening line drawn from Dickens, Charlie Chaplin movies, Shakespeare plays, a 20th-century female artist whose works play a part in the story etc.). But, more fundamentally than those, it draws together the themes that have been weaving around one another throughout the first three parts of the work.
Here are my favourite quotes from each part of the quartet:
It’s about history, and being neighbours, Elisabeth said. (Autumn)
Depends whether you think there’s a them and an us, Iris says, or just an us. (Winter)
What if, the girl says. Instead of saying, this border divides these places. We said, this border unites these places. This border holds together these two really interesting different places. What if we declared border crossings places where, listen, when you crossed them, you yourself became doubly possible. (Spring)
It makes you and I more than just you or I, Hannah says. It makes us us. (Summer)
These are not my favourite quotes because of any literary merit they may have, but because they capture key ideas from each book. Overall, I think the Seasonal Quartet is a cry for tolerance and acceptance. It was Jesus, the founder of the Christian religion, who said we should all “love your neighbour as yourself� and then, when challenged about the definition of “neighbour�, told a story (The Good Samaritan) to show that my neighbour is anyone I come across who could benefit from my compassion. Jesus also said that a key commandment of Scripture, in his view, was that we should “love your neighbour as yourself�.
Why do I mention this in the context of these books? These are not Christian books, so why turn to the Christian religion for quotes? Fundamentally, it feels to me that these ideas underpin what Ali Smith is writing about. Yes, the books have a political slant to them and that political slant will not be to everyone’s taste, but I think that if you can dig underneath the politics, the underlying message is about how we treat one another and how we treat ourselves.
In my reading, the first three books leave me with thoughts about neighbours/community (Autumn), self (Winter) and countries (Spring). And then Summer draws these together to make sure we know that all three are required if we are to make progress as human beings. And that we have to let go of the past in order to move forward into a better future. These aren't necessarily new ideas, but this set of four books makes you want to do something about it. Let me explain.
In Autumn, as well as the quote above, Elisabeth as a young child says about talking to Daniel ”Here are the questions I would ask him 1 what is it like to have neighbours 2 what is it like to be a neighbour�. A key thread running through Autumn is the relationship between neighbours Elisabeth and Daniel. The book as a whole feels very much that it challenges us about how we treat those around us. The Brexit focus makes it a book about local communities and their reaction to the votes and the schisms revealed. I finished Autumn very much thinking about local community, my neighbourhood.
In Winter, we follow follow several characters on a voyage of self-discovery. Lux plays a key role in shining a light (hence her name) into people’s lives. It becomes about transformation of the individual and we read quotes such as:
That’s what winter is: an exercise in remembering how to still yourself then how to come pliantly back to life again.
Or
You never stop being yourself on the inside, whatever age people think you are by looking at you from the outside.
Then, in Spring, the focus shifts and becomes more international. We read, along with the quote above, about borders and whether they can be broken down:
Think about it, Paddy says. Ireland in uproar. Brand new union. Brand new border. Brand new ancient Irish civil unrest. Don’t tell me this isn’t relevant all over again in its brand new same old way.
And that it�
…wouldn’t take long, no time at all, for those fairly new separate little hedge sprigs next to each other in their boxes, they were more than sprigs now, bushes already, to form into just the one hedge instead of all the separate plants they’d been planted as.
So, the first three volumes of the quartet tell us about local communities, individuals and countries.
Summer provides the perfect culmination to this set of books. On just page 16, it lays its cards on the table by quoting from Hannah Arendt
Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history
Then the artist in focus for this instalment is Lorenza Mazzetti and, in particular, a film she made called “Together�. There are significant portions of the book that focus on internment (a topic that has been present through the whole quartet as a sort of antithesis of forgiveness and acceptance). And alongside the quote above (It makes us us) it is clear we are reading a plea for individuals and nations to break from the past and head into a future where barriers have been broken down.
If you want to see some more details about the actual book, take a look at the excellent reviews already written by my friends Paul and Gumble’s Yard. I haven’t talked about Albert Einstein (and the significance of “ein Stein�), for example. And I haven’t said anything about Sacha and Robert, the return of several characters from Autumn and Spring and the way two of them get together. And I haven’t mentioned how we find out who someone’s great-grandmother is. Read these two reviews, but first, and more importantly, READ THE BOOKS!
Gumble’s Yard
Paul
In particular, as highlighted in Paul’s review, Gumble’s Yard’s review illustrates the connections between the four books in the quartet and collecting these as you read through the whole set is enormous fun.
Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet is an incredible achievement. Reading all four books together as a single work of art is, I believe, the best way to appreciate the enormity of what Smith has created. I can’t recommend that you read Summer. I can only recommend that you read Autumn, then Winter, then Spring and THEN Summer.
August 31, 2022
"What art does is, it exists... And then because we encounter it, we remember we exist too. And that one day we won’t."
I finished this up after a week which had seen me laid up in bed and isolated indoors because of our now familiar global foe. I remember that I was a fan of Autumn when I read it just over 2 years ago but thought that Winter and Spring lost their direction a bit. That, or I just got tired of what Smith was doing. The break has served me well and here I am, getting this one in (just about) on the last day of August. Pacing back and forth in my room, reading the separate sections of the final book of the quartet, there was a feeling of nostalgia mixed with anxiety and sadness that was fighting to get out. Familiar characters from across the series were back � I loved seeing the stories intermingle and thought it was tastefully done. So why was I feeling this way?
Well, you can pin down the anxiety with Smith. The quartet will serve as a great time capsule for me to read in some years and look back on what this 4�5-year period was like. She is not afraid to put her finger directly on the thing that you are not supposed to mention, the thing causing everyone grief. Whatever that may be. Social media addiction, lack of meaning, rise of depression, environmental fatalism, etc. Sadness, then? Well, the individual sections are sad, aren’t they? Even the ones that are satirical, angry at the status quo, or straight up silly. Internment camps, border crossings, immigrants and refugees treated like garbage, Boris Johnson, a small town in England where great minds are stifled by the fact that there is fuck-all to do and those who are there seem more interested in fitting in the monotony of it all than breaking out, and from the depths of the pages in 2020� a silent whisper of “the virus�, lockdowns, and what it all means, where it’s all going.
Which leads me to the overarching and overwhelming tone of my feelings: nostalgia. Weird to say, no? I remember being 2 months into lockdown. Can’t remember having done much for close to 60 days. I took out Abbey Road, got the record player ready, began playing it. The album was going down well. When I got to Here Comes the Sun, I looked out. It was mid-May, the sun was shining. I closed my eyes and allowed the rays to warm up my face. “Little darlin�, it’s been a long, cold, lonely winter. Little darlin�, it feels like years since it’s been here.� The Beatles had been keeping me company throughout the weirdest stage of my life � a moment in time where I was waking up, sleeping, “finishing class�, socializing, eating, working, singing, dancing, reading, all from the same location. I ordered far too much sushi. I was online with friends every night, where we did monstrous challenges, finishing TV seasons we had no business doing as functioning young adults. The world was going to shit, was deep in shit already. We were being inundated by news we didn’t want to hear. I ostriched a bit. But on that day in the middle of May, I listened to “Sun, sun, sun, here comes� and remember thinking� my god, I think there will come a time where I will miss this. I really truly think I will. I didn’t even immediately chide myself for having thought that. I knew it to be true. And I guess all I’m trying to say is: it was true. I miss aspects of it. I would never want to go back, but I do miss some weird mixture of feelings from that bizarre, utterly terrifying time. Ali Smith’s work and my week reawakened that.
This was, for me, the best of the quartet. A fitting end. Now to read Companion Piece and pretend like it isn’t number 5.
I finished this up after a week which had seen me laid up in bed and isolated indoors because of our now familiar global foe. I remember that I was a fan of Autumn when I read it just over 2 years ago but thought that Winter and Spring lost their direction a bit. That, or I just got tired of what Smith was doing. The break has served me well and here I am, getting this one in (just about) on the last day of August. Pacing back and forth in my room, reading the separate sections of the final book of the quartet, there was a feeling of nostalgia mixed with anxiety and sadness that was fighting to get out. Familiar characters from across the series were back � I loved seeing the stories intermingle and thought it was tastefully done. So why was I feeling this way?
Well, you can pin down the anxiety with Smith. The quartet will serve as a great time capsule for me to read in some years and look back on what this 4�5-year period was like. She is not afraid to put her finger directly on the thing that you are not supposed to mention, the thing causing everyone grief. Whatever that may be. Social media addiction, lack of meaning, rise of depression, environmental fatalism, etc. Sadness, then? Well, the individual sections are sad, aren’t they? Even the ones that are satirical, angry at the status quo, or straight up silly. Internment camps, border crossings, immigrants and refugees treated like garbage, Boris Johnson, a small town in England where great minds are stifled by the fact that there is fuck-all to do and those who are there seem more interested in fitting in the monotony of it all than breaking out, and from the depths of the pages in 2020� a silent whisper of “the virus�, lockdowns, and what it all means, where it’s all going.
Which leads me to the overarching and overwhelming tone of my feelings: nostalgia. Weird to say, no? I remember being 2 months into lockdown. Can’t remember having done much for close to 60 days. I took out Abbey Road, got the record player ready, began playing it. The album was going down well. When I got to Here Comes the Sun, I looked out. It was mid-May, the sun was shining. I closed my eyes and allowed the rays to warm up my face. “Little darlin�, it’s been a long, cold, lonely winter. Little darlin�, it feels like years since it’s been here.� The Beatles had been keeping me company throughout the weirdest stage of my life � a moment in time where I was waking up, sleeping, “finishing class�, socializing, eating, working, singing, dancing, reading, all from the same location. I ordered far too much sushi. I was online with friends every night, where we did monstrous challenges, finishing TV seasons we had no business doing as functioning young adults. The world was going to shit, was deep in shit already. We were being inundated by news we didn’t want to hear. I ostriched a bit. But on that day in the middle of May, I listened to “Sun, sun, sun, here comes� and remember thinking� my god, I think there will come a time where I will miss this. I really truly think I will. I didn’t even immediately chide myself for having thought that. I knew it to be true. And I guess all I’m trying to say is: it was true. I miss aspects of it. I would never want to go back, but I do miss some weird mixture of feelings from that bizarre, utterly terrifying time. Ali Smith’s work and my week reawakened that.
This was, for me, the best of the quartet. A fitting end. Now to read Companion Piece and pretend like it isn’t number 5.
July 6, 2020
After reading the first three of the quartet, I was curious as to how Ali Smith might somehow manage to tie everything together with this closing instalment.. Familiar faces/venues from all prior seasons return throughout Summer, but more than closing the circle, the last in the series ends things on an open, incomplete, hopeful note. Although it's not easy to see the current global (and UK) crises as anything but chaos partly wrought by joyless opportunists, Smith convinces us -- at least for the duration of the book, a miraculous enough feat as Covid-19 and Brexit doubly devastate the national psyche -- that much bigger changes, way beyond the parochial, money-grubbing agendas and the mendacious marshalling of the masses against their own interests, are always afoot, and that, sappy as it may sound (these are the least cynical works of fiction I can think of, despite numerous barbs against predictable villains), faith in the best of us -- and the sense that we're all fundamentally the same -- has never been more important. Resistance is not futile. There are always heroic, galvanising, against-the-grain examples -- Lorenza Mazetti, Greta Thunberg, Albert Einstein -- if we need them, and we've rarely needed them more.
'And summer's surely really all about an imagined end. We head for it instinctually like it must mean something. We're always looking for it, looking to it, heading towards it all year, the way a horizon holds the promise of a sunset. We're always looking for the full open leaf, the open warmth, the promise that we'll one day soon surely be able to lie back and have summer done to us; one day soon we'll be treated well by the world. Like there's really a kinder finale and it's not just possible but assured, there's a natural harmony that'll be spread at your feet, unrolled like a sunlit landscape just for you. As if what it was always all about, your time on earth, was the full happy stretch of all the muscles of the body on a warmed patch of grass, one long sweet stem of that grass in the mouth.
Care free.
What a thought.
Summer.
The Summer's Tale.
There's no such play.
Don't be fooled, Grace.
The briefest and slipperiest of the seasons, the one that won't be held to account -- because summer won't be held at all, except in bits, fragments, moments, flashes of memory of socalled or imagined perfect summers, summers that never existed.
Not even this one she's in exists. Even though it's apparently the best summer so far of the century. Not even when she's quite literally walking down a road as beautiful and archetypal as this through an actual perfect summer afternoon.
So we mourn it while we're in it.
Look at me walking down a road in summer thinking about the transience of summer.
Even while I'm right at the heart of it I just can't get to the heart of it.'
Thank you Netgalley and Penguin UK for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
'And summer's surely really all about an imagined end. We head for it instinctually like it must mean something. We're always looking for it, looking to it, heading towards it all year, the way a horizon holds the promise of a sunset. We're always looking for the full open leaf, the open warmth, the promise that we'll one day soon surely be able to lie back and have summer done to us; one day soon we'll be treated well by the world. Like there's really a kinder finale and it's not just possible but assured, there's a natural harmony that'll be spread at your feet, unrolled like a sunlit landscape just for you. As if what it was always all about, your time on earth, was the full happy stretch of all the muscles of the body on a warmed patch of grass, one long sweet stem of that grass in the mouth.
Care free.
What a thought.
Summer.
The Summer's Tale.
There's no such play.
Don't be fooled, Grace.
The briefest and slipperiest of the seasons, the one that won't be held to account -- because summer won't be held at all, except in bits, fragments, moments, flashes of memory of socalled or imagined perfect summers, summers that never existed.
Not even this one she's in exists. Even though it's apparently the best summer so far of the century. Not even when she's quite literally walking down a road as beautiful and archetypal as this through an actual perfect summer afternoon.
So we mourn it while we're in it.
Look at me walking down a road in summer thinking about the transience of summer.
Even while I'm right at the heart of it I just can't get to the heart of it.'
Thank you Netgalley and Penguin UK for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
December 29, 2024
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021
The writing in Smith’s seasonal quartet always feels effortless, blithe, urgent and lightly disheveled � written at a breakneck speed and best consumed at a similar pace. In Summer, we find Smith’s trademark wordsmithery in top form, binding past and present, time and memory (Art in Nature / Art Inertia, internet / internment, meander / me-ander). We also revisit characters from earlier novels (among them my favourites, Daniel and Elizabeth from Autumn), who mingle with a few new ones.
The success of the quartet has always been as much about timing as about content � each book reflecting and digesting the events of the year as and when we are experiencing them. (2016) was the first Brexit novel. (2017) grappled with the rise of Trumpism. (2019) looked at environmental activism and the issue of borders. Each installment became a kind of pressure release valve, or art-as-social-relief:
“Creativity is cultural not because it is derivative of it, but because it aims to heal culture. Art saturated with the unconscious acts like a compensatory dream in the individual: it tries to rebalance and address deep-rooted problems�.
This is where Summer (2020), I believe, falls flat. The major defining events of 2020 � COVID, lockdown, the BLM protests � remain, for the most part, mere footnotes to the story (early events, such as the Australian wildfires, are more vividly rendered). This may be because the majority of the novel was written and conceived pre-pandemic, with only a few details and concluding chapters reworked to reflect the events of the year.
The result often feels like a novel in denial, or a mish-mash of different worlds. The first few chapters, for example, set up a theme of forgiveness (“Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history�) which feels very much at odds with later chapters (a critique of the UK government’s handling of the pandemic and a look at the rage propelling BLM protests). To me, Summer would have worked far better as one or the other: a frank, pre-pandemic book, or a much delayed, re-worked novel that fully grapples with the fallout of 2020.
Perhaps that is the point. We are experiencing so much upheaval at present that art can no longer keep up with it, can no longer reframe the chaos. � my favourite in the series by far � was whimsical, magical, meditative. This lightness, applied to the events of 2020, feels misplaced. As a round-up to the formidable quartet, I was yearning for something more weighty, more digested � a fresh perspective on the challenges of 2020. Mere name-dropping, unfortunately, did not spell catharsis for me.
Mood: Rushed, disjointed with notes of hope
Rating: 6.5/10
Also .
Related reviews
Autumn
Winter
Spring
The writing in Smith’s seasonal quartet always feels effortless, blithe, urgent and lightly disheveled � written at a breakneck speed and best consumed at a similar pace. In Summer, we find Smith’s trademark wordsmithery in top form, binding past and present, time and memory (Art in Nature / Art Inertia, internet / internment, meander / me-ander). We also revisit characters from earlier novels (among them my favourites, Daniel and Elizabeth from Autumn), who mingle with a few new ones.
The success of the quartet has always been as much about timing as about content � each book reflecting and digesting the events of the year as and when we are experiencing them. (2016) was the first Brexit novel. (2017) grappled with the rise of Trumpism. (2019) looked at environmental activism and the issue of borders. Each installment became a kind of pressure release valve, or art-as-social-relief:
“Creativity is cultural not because it is derivative of it, but because it aims to heal culture. Art saturated with the unconscious acts like a compensatory dream in the individual: it tries to rebalance and address deep-rooted problems�.
This is where Summer (2020), I believe, falls flat. The major defining events of 2020 � COVID, lockdown, the BLM protests � remain, for the most part, mere footnotes to the story (early events, such as the Australian wildfires, are more vividly rendered). This may be because the majority of the novel was written and conceived pre-pandemic, with only a few details and concluding chapters reworked to reflect the events of the year.
The result often feels like a novel in denial, or a mish-mash of different worlds. The first few chapters, for example, set up a theme of forgiveness (“Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history�) which feels very much at odds with later chapters (a critique of the UK government’s handling of the pandemic and a look at the rage propelling BLM protests). To me, Summer would have worked far better as one or the other: a frank, pre-pandemic book, or a much delayed, re-worked novel that fully grapples with the fallout of 2020.
Perhaps that is the point. We are experiencing so much upheaval at present that art can no longer keep up with it, can no longer reframe the chaos. � my favourite in the series by far � was whimsical, magical, meditative. This lightness, applied to the events of 2020, feels misplaced. As a round-up to the formidable quartet, I was yearning for something more weighty, more digested � a fresh perspective on the challenges of 2020. Mere name-dropping, unfortunately, did not spell catharsis for me.
Mood: Rushed, disjointed with notes of hope
Rating: 6.5/10
Also .
Related reviews
Autumn
Winter
Spring
March 12, 2022
Autumn
Winter
Spring ****
Summer
Four stars for Smith because I loved her story, with a bonus star for her politics.
Winter
Spring ****
Summer
Four stars for Smith because I loved her story, with a bonus star for her politics.
August 28, 2024
My inner grammar comes apart
When all my summer birds have gone
—O swifts who weave the air with art!
Ali’s the Smith with the most heart
Her words will melt a core of stone
Whose inner grammar comes apart
One should read Autumn for a start
To understand from where they come
Those swifts who weave the air with art
Then on to Winter with its hard
Frost-covered ground beneath the sun
And inner grammar come apart
Then Spring appeared in every park
And every twig did come undone
So swifts could weave the air with art
I must admit to tears that smart
Now that both book and year are done
And swifts who weave the air with art
My inner grammar tear apart
Read
July 31, 2020I finished this last night and while I enjoyed it, especially reconnecting with Daniel, I love his part of the novel where he is locked down because of the Covid Virus. He is elderly now and his neighbour looks after him. As he lies in his bed his memory plays tricks on him, and one minute he will be present and coherent and then his memory will slip back to his past.
I realized upon finishing that I cannot rate this book at the moment because it should not be read as a standalone novel. This is not what Ali Smith has intended and it has been so long ago that I read the first three, that many of the references were going over my head. The four books of the Seasonal Quartet I believe are meant to be read as one whole story, preferably back to back, especially if you have a memory like mine. I think what Ali Smith has attempted to do, and succeed, with this quartet of books is quite brilliant. This last book in the quartet takes place during the Covid pandemic, and Smith must have been writing write up until the deadline.
As soon as I can find some time to read all four together I will rate "Summer" then. To do so now would not be fair or be a realistic rating. I will say that a good chunk of the novel has an epistolary structure with much of the book being letters between various characters and of course is has Smith's style and humour.
Thanks to Netgalley and Hamish Hamilton for the ARC.
Rating to come after reading all the four books together.
I realized upon finishing that I cannot rate this book at the moment because it should not be read as a standalone novel. This is not what Ali Smith has intended and it has been so long ago that I read the first three, that many of the references were going over my head. The four books of the Seasonal Quartet I believe are meant to be read as one whole story, preferably back to back, especially if you have a memory like mine. I think what Ali Smith has attempted to do, and succeed, with this quartet of books is quite brilliant. This last book in the quartet takes place during the Covid pandemic, and Smith must have been writing write up until the deadline.
As soon as I can find some time to read all four together I will rate "Summer" then. To do so now would not be fair or be a realistic rating. I will say that a good chunk of the novel has an epistolary structure with much of the book being letters between various characters and of course is has Smith's style and humour.
Thanks to Netgalley and Hamish Hamilton for the ARC.
Rating to come after reading all the four books together.
August 21, 2020
Summer’s surely really all about an imagined end. We head for it instinctually like it must mean something. We’re always looking for it, looking to it, heading towards it all year, the way a horizon holds the promise of a sunset. We’re always looking for the full open leaf, the open warmth, the promise that we’ll one day soon surely be able to lie back and have summer done to us; one day soon we’ll be treated well by the world. Like there really is a kinder finale and it’s not just possible but assured, there’s a natural harmony that’ll be spread at your feet, unrolled like a sunlit landscape just for you.
Care free.
What a thought.
Summer.
The Summer's Tale.
There's no such play, Grace.
Don't be fooled.
“Summer� is variously defined here as a lintel (the most important beam, structurally, in a building), as a horse that can carry a great weight, as the season most overloaded with our expectations. That’s a lot of pressure for Ali Smith to put on her own � the final volume in her Seasonal quartet � but, too, Smith writes: “Summers can take it. That’s why we call them summers.� Once again, Smith has released a volume written completely in the moment (she may have started this thinking her themes would continue to concentrate on climate change, the rise of right wing politics, and refugee detainee camps, but she was able to organically include COVID-19 and the death of George Floyd as though her narrative had been inevitably moving towards those world-changing events all along), and taken together, I simply can’t imagine a more appropriate encapsulation and exploration of our moment in time. I think that Summer did an amazing job of tying everything together, and while was the absolute standout of the series for me, and although the other three in the quartet merited four stars on their own, this is definitely a five star series overall; I can imagine this being read and studied deep into the future and look forward to soon rereading all four as a cohesive experience. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
Well, that’s what art is, maybe. Something that impresses mysteriously on you and you don’t know why.
Perhaps this definition for art is all I really need to write, and while I don’t want to rehash the plot for Summer here, I do want to record some impressions. As in the first three volumes, Smith invokes Dickens (the beginning of the actual plot echoes ) and Shakespeare (this time, ) and we are introduced to another woman artist who deserves to be better remembered (the visual artist, novelist, and filmmaker Lorenza Mazzetti). There are references to Chaplin and Einstein, and along with frequent punning and word play, there’s a revisit with the sculpture by Barbara Hepworth that allows for word play on Einstein’s name. Characters from the first three volumes are reintroduced and we learn more about their pasts and see the threads of their present all tied up (the deep state agents of SA4A make another appearance, demonstrating how bureaucratic overreach inevitably leads to the comically absurd). And while � perhaps particularly in a COVID lockdown � it’s easy to despair that the world is closer to its doomsday than ever before, Smith offers up the twin meaning-makers of art and activism.
It’s not incidental that Smith has populated these books with so many artists: confronted by their own doomsday times, they, like Smith in this quartet, strove to create meaning out of mortality:
What art does is exist. And then because we encounter it, we remember we exist too. And that one day we won’t.
And with several generations of British activists giving their opinions on the present in Summer, Smith reminds us that it is always doomsday somewhere:
Yes, it’s surreal for us here right now. But it’s never not a state of emergency somewhere. We’re naive if we think life normally isn’t surreal as fuck for most people scraping a living on this earth
The overall philosophy of the series seems to be: When we are confronted with confusing and dangerous times, we ought to strive to make meaning and help others; it was ever so; the seasons will continue to follow one upon the other, world without end, but the fate of humanity lies in human hands. This is the masterwork of a deep thinker; it is art and I find myself, thereby, mysteriously impressed.
September 3, 2020
Read my thoughts in the Irish Times:
October 30, 2020
After finishing Summer I took a trip down my Seasonal Quartet memory lane and noticed my admiration has been ebbing over the ensuing years. Is it possible this is a reflection of my own unease with how the world has evolved since 2016? Is it a growing realisation that attempts to address a contemporary mindset in overly stylistic fashion ( Weather ! ) is not, at this point in time, ideal for me? Is it possible my less than nimble brain has reached its limits of processing power needed for an Ali Smith novel? In short, I may not be worthy of this possible masterpiece. It happens. Proceed with caution Ali Smith fans.
In fairness to me, I did seem rather cheery and enthusiastic for this type of novel in those far off Autumnal days of yore :
Wow. Not sure what I just read, but I know I was stunned by it. I am not sure why I have been avoiding Ali Smith all this time, probably something to do with abstraction and shifting timelines. A vague notion of "cleverness". I didn't mind at all if we were suddenly flung from the mid-nineties to 2016 and back again or were presented with a dreamscape of being stuck in a pine tree.
How cute. Don't worry that abstraction will come back to bite you eventually.
Winter 2017 is when the doubts crept in:
It's all fantastically interesting taken individually, but this time the way it was all pasted together seemed less dazzling. The one character I grew to love the most, was a disembodied, wordless floating head, which I found unaccountable hilarious during the first part of the novel but it then turns to stone and disappears, and with it, I think a little of my interest, unfortunately.
And by Spring2019 I was well over the entire endeavour:
Barrelling hither and yon from Twitter rants to catching clouds, the life of Mansfield, the rose poetry of Rilke.I don't know if it was my current reading mood or the feeling that the much-vaunted timeliness of this novel combined in an unfortunate way with happenings in the real world ( can I blame Boris here ? ) but whatever the reasonings I found this a surprising chore to get through.
Also Florence rather did my head in.
So to Summer 2020 - And it all feels a little Ali Smith paint-by-numbers. Plug in an obscure artist or two; Italian filmmaker Lorenza Mazzetti, swap in Einstein for Rilke. Drop-in all the contemporaneous references you can; The Virus, Lockdowns, Trump, Boris, of course. Add in some disorientating time shifts, a dollop of Shakespeare, some undeniably fun wordplay and bish-bosh-bash your crazy quilt of Summer 2020 is done.
The studious reader would find a great deal of satisfaction in recognising some of the gang from the previous three novels, as the class rebel, I regret not taking better notes. I became thoroughly discombobulated in the threads of time and character and was just too lazy to do the work to get it all straight. As an amende honourable to Smith and her fans I do recognise there were some fabulous parts - the story of Lorenza Mazzetti has stuck with me, the section on internment camps was eye-opening. I enjoyed the early family dynamics of Robert and Sacha and I wish we could have stuck ( tee hee Robert ! ) with these two longer. The wordplay as I have mentioned in every Ali Smith review is fun and fabulous.
But the cold fact remains - I didn't enjoy it, admire yes, enjoy no. Will this point of view evolve with time and a deeper reread - probably.
In fairness to me, I did seem rather cheery and enthusiastic for this type of novel in those far off Autumnal days of yore :
Wow. Not sure what I just read, but I know I was stunned by it. I am not sure why I have been avoiding Ali Smith all this time, probably something to do with abstraction and shifting timelines. A vague notion of "cleverness". I didn't mind at all if we were suddenly flung from the mid-nineties to 2016 and back again or were presented with a dreamscape of being stuck in a pine tree.
How cute. Don't worry that abstraction will come back to bite you eventually.
Winter 2017 is when the doubts crept in:
It's all fantastically interesting taken individually, but this time the way it was all pasted together seemed less dazzling. The one character I grew to love the most, was a disembodied, wordless floating head, which I found unaccountable hilarious during the first part of the novel but it then turns to stone and disappears, and with it, I think a little of my interest, unfortunately.
And by Spring2019 I was well over the entire endeavour:
Barrelling hither and yon from Twitter rants to catching clouds, the life of Mansfield, the rose poetry of Rilke.I don't know if it was my current reading mood or the feeling that the much-vaunted timeliness of this novel combined in an unfortunate way with happenings in the real world ( can I blame Boris here ? ) but whatever the reasonings I found this a surprising chore to get through.
Also Florence rather did my head in.
So to Summer 2020 - And it all feels a little Ali Smith paint-by-numbers. Plug in an obscure artist or two; Italian filmmaker Lorenza Mazzetti, swap in Einstein for Rilke. Drop-in all the contemporaneous references you can; The Virus, Lockdowns, Trump, Boris, of course. Add in some disorientating time shifts, a dollop of Shakespeare, some undeniably fun wordplay and bish-bosh-bash your crazy quilt of Summer 2020 is done.
The studious reader would find a great deal of satisfaction in recognising some of the gang from the previous three novels, as the class rebel, I regret not taking better notes. I became thoroughly discombobulated in the threads of time and character and was just too lazy to do the work to get it all straight. As an amende honourable to Smith and her fans I do recognise there were some fabulous parts - the story of Lorenza Mazzetti has stuck with me, the section on internment camps was eye-opening. I enjoyed the early family dynamics of Robert and Sacha and I wish we could have stuck ( tee hee Robert ! ) with these two longer. The wordplay as I have mentioned in every Ali Smith review is fun and fabulous.
But the cold fact remains - I didn't enjoy it, admire yes, enjoy no. Will this point of view evolve with time and a deeper reread - probably.
August 21, 2020
Baigdama Ali Smith "Vasarą" ašarojau dėl visko - kad taip gražu, taip skausminga, kad ji taip pagauna viską, kas vyksta ne praeity ar ateity ar kitam galimam pasauly, o šiandien, visam pasauly ir mums. Šitoj daly: kovidas, kaukės, tolesni breksito atgarsiai, nepavargstančios protestuoti paauglės ir senutės aktyvistės, susieinantys visų kitų metų laikų personažai - Danielis ir Elizabeta iš "Rudens", Artas su Šarlote iš "Žiemos" (iš "Pavasario" lyg neaptikau ryškesnių linijų, bet iš ten perėjusi nuotaika - tik "Pavasario" pyktis ir revoliucija "Vasaroje" virtusi liūdesiu ir pastanga keistis).
Man gražiausia, ką Ali Smith daro, - ne tik parodo, kaip visos istorijos pindamosi keičia vienos kitas (ne veltui "Vasaroj" tiek daug Einšteino pliaže), ne tik jų galutinis susipynimas (dėl to metų laikus tikrai reikia skaityt iš eilės taip kaip parašyta, o ne bet kaip), bet ir tai, kaip ji vieną ant kito deda skausmo sluoksnius ("Vasaroj" Antrojo pasaulinio internuotųjų asmenų stovykla virsta pabėgėlių sulaikymo centru šiandien ir jame kalinamais, o vėliau, prasidėjus kovido pandemijai, tiesiai į gatvę paleidžiamais žmonėm) - būtiną vasaros dalį, - bet greta to - sluoksniai bendrumo, kažkokios pamatinės galimybės susikalbėti ar visiems džiaugtis tuo pačiu apsamanojusiu kelių šimtų metų senumo antkapiu su meilės eilėraščiu.
Art in Nature, kaip ji sako, ir tas Art jai yra ne tik objektai-kūriniai, bet iš skausmo ir vis tiek nedingstančio pamatinio santykio poreikio besirandantis procesas. Ir ji sako, kad visą tą galim turėt netgi pačioj niūriausioj karantininių baimių ir taikos Baltarusijoj vilčių valandoj. Ir, matyt, turim, - tik vis pamiršti tą, užsigalvoji, kaip liūdna, kad vasarą vėl praleidai prie kompo, nečilinai gamtoj tiek, kiek norėjai, nenuvertei / nepamatei kalnų.
Bet gal išties vasara ne visai apie tai, o labiau apie tą gėrio-grožio, bet ir skausmo jame jausmą, - nežinau.
Čia važiavom vežti labdaros į "Vilties centrą" Vilniuj Liepkalnio g., nieko baisiai gero nenuvežėm, bet išsukdamos iš kiemo pamatėm kelių šimtų metrų žmonių eilę prie įėjimo. Ko jie ten laukia? - nemokamų pietų, patalynės, gal tų senovinių mokytojos stiliaus batelių su kablais, kokių krūvelę nuvežėm? - aš nežinau, ir nestojom aiškintis. Bet tas vaizdas kaip peilį suvarė, aš jau seniai nebuvau mačiusi tokio ramaus, eilute išsirikiavusio vargo, prieš kurį ar kuriam tu nieko negali padaryt, nors norėtum padaryt belenką. Kaip gerai, kad tas "Vilties centras" yra, bet ir kaip skauda. Pasakojau draugei, sakė, kad reikia matyti tokius dalykus, nes nelieki vien savo galvoj ir tampi geresniu žmogum. Aš nesijaučiu pagerėjus, bet grynai apie tai yra visas Ali Smith kvartetas. Kad reikia matyt, ne nematyt, ir su tuo būti.
Dabar ieškau nematyto Lorenzos Mazzetti, apie kurią daug rašo knygoj, filmo "Together". Apie buvimą kartu yra ir viskas "Vasaroje" ir "Vasara":
Man gražiausia, ką Ali Smith daro, - ne tik parodo, kaip visos istorijos pindamosi keičia vienos kitas (ne veltui "Vasaroj" tiek daug Einšteino pliaže), ne tik jų galutinis susipynimas (dėl to metų laikus tikrai reikia skaityt iš eilės taip kaip parašyta, o ne bet kaip), bet ir tai, kaip ji vieną ant kito deda skausmo sluoksnius ("Vasaroj" Antrojo pasaulinio internuotųjų asmenų stovykla virsta pabėgėlių sulaikymo centru šiandien ir jame kalinamais, o vėliau, prasidėjus kovido pandemijai, tiesiai į gatvę paleidžiamais žmonėm) - būtiną vasaros dalį, - bet greta to - sluoksniai bendrumo, kažkokios pamatinės galimybės susikalbėti ar visiems džiaugtis tuo pačiu apsamanojusiu kelių šimtų metų senumo antkapiu su meilės eilėraščiu.
Art in Nature, kaip ji sako, ir tas Art jai yra ne tik objektai-kūriniai, bet iš skausmo ir vis tiek nedingstančio pamatinio santykio poreikio besirandantis procesas. Ir ji sako, kad visą tą galim turėt netgi pačioj niūriausioj karantininių baimių ir taikos Baltarusijoj vilčių valandoj. Ir, matyt, turim, - tik vis pamiršti tą, užsigalvoji, kaip liūdna, kad vasarą vėl praleidai prie kompo, nečilinai gamtoj tiek, kiek norėjai, nenuvertei / nepamatei kalnų.
Bet gal išties vasara ne visai apie tai, o labiau apie tą gėrio-grožio, bet ir skausmo jame jausmą, - nežinau.
Čia važiavom vežti labdaros į "Vilties centrą" Vilniuj Liepkalnio g., nieko baisiai gero nenuvežėm, bet išsukdamos iš kiemo pamatėm kelių šimtų metrų žmonių eilę prie įėjimo. Ko jie ten laukia? - nemokamų pietų, patalynės, gal tų senovinių mokytojos stiliaus batelių su kablais, kokių krūvelę nuvežėm? - aš nežinau, ir nestojom aiškintis. Bet tas vaizdas kaip peilį suvarė, aš jau seniai nebuvau mačiusi tokio ramaus, eilute išsirikiavusio vargo, prieš kurį ar kuriam tu nieko negali padaryt, nors norėtum padaryt belenką. Kaip gerai, kad tas "Vilties centras" yra, bet ir kaip skauda. Pasakojau draugei, sakė, kad reikia matyti tokius dalykus, nes nelieki vien savo galvoj ir tampi geresniu žmogum. Aš nesijaučiu pagerėjus, bet grynai apie tai yra visas Ali Smith kvartetas. Kad reikia matyt, ne nematyt, ir su tuo būti.
Dabar ieškau nematyto Lorenzos Mazzetti, apie kurią daug rašo knygoj, filmo "Together". Apie buvimą kartu yra ir viskas "Vasaroje" ir "Vasara":
The English word for summer comes from the Old English sumor, from the proto-indo-european root sam, meaning both one and together. (p. 263)
April 2, 2022
4,5 von 5 Sternen
Mit dem Buch "Sommer" beendet Ali Smith das Jahreszeitenquartett, das mir ein tolles Lesevergnügen bereitet hat.
Politischer Schwerpunkt des Buches ist der Lockdown mit interessanten Gedankengängen, die zwischen den Zeilen stehen. Inhaltlich geht es um die Geschwister Sacha und Robert und deren Mutter Grace. Die 16-jährige Sacha hat die Vision die Welt im Alleingang zu retten indem sie alles zu Fuß geht und auf Fleisch komplett verzichtet. Ihr drei Jahre jüngerer Bruder ist ein absoluter Einstein-Fan, hochbegabt und sieht die Schule lieber von außen. Durch die Zufallsbekanntschaft von Arthur und Charlotte gehen die drei auf Reisen, die sie zu den Spuren Einsteins auf deren Flucht führt.
Arthur und Charlotte sind Namen aus dem zweiten Teil "Winter" und werden, genauso wie Daniel Gluck aus dem Teil "Herbst" mit integriert. Eine wunderbare Sache, denn so verbindet Ali Smith ihr Jahreszeitenquartett.
Ich persönlich bin seit dem ersten Teil "Herbst" von dem Schreibstil, sowie der Kombination aus Kunst und Politik, welche Ali Smith in jedem Teil aufgreift, sehr angetan.
Von mir gibt es eine absolute Leseempfehlung.
January 25, 2022
“What you’re making of it all?/what will you make of it all?�
The above citation is located somewhere halfway through this book. Maybe this was done on purpose by Smith: "reader, what do you make of all this that I've written?". Because that is what - I guess - every reader is asking him/herself, reading this fourth part of her seasonal cyclus, with another sequence of strange scenes, continuous dialogues, memories and hallucinations, etc. If Smith's intention was to stress the opacity of reality, she certainly succeeded.
Of course, everyone expects that in this fourth part of her series all elements from the previous seasons come together and the real storylines become clear. In part, that certainly happens. Especially the puzzlers get their money's worth (some of the reviews on this site even give away all the keys). To be honest: this aspect didn’t captivate me. But it is nice to see 104 year old Daniel Gluck reappear in this fourth part, with his associative series of hallucinations and memories that indeed clear up some mysteries from the previous parts. Unfortunately, with other storylines, such as that of Charlotte and Arthur, and especially that of the 'illegal' Hero, this does not come into its own.
Once you accept that you can't place everything, many passages in themselves are quite nice to read. This book, and just about the entire series, is primarily a sequence of intriguing dialogues. So much so, that they reminded me of Rachel Cusk's experiment in her , though the latter has quite a different angle. Some of Smith's dialogues are downright enticing, others seem to be going nowhere. For example, Grace Greenlaw's short conversation, at the little church in Suffolk, with a carpenter unknown to her is absolutely endearing, this is great literature.
There's also a dreamy undertone in most of the scenes in this book, both in the descriptive scenes as in the dialogues, and of course especially in the scenes concerning Daniel Gluck, lying in his bed, offering a continuous stream of memories and hallucinaties. I detected this dreamy, sometimes downright surrealistic undertone also in the previous parts of the seasons-cyclus. And, up to a certain level, this had an attractive, mesmerizing effect.
But then there are the references to current events that Smith also in this part liberally scatters around. In the previous parts, the Brexit, Trump, climate and migration issues were put on the foreground. In ‘Summer� Smith resumes this to a limited extent, but she has also incorporated the pandemic � apparently at the last moment; she did so in the spring of 2020, so at a time when the length and depth of the corona crisis was not yet completely clear. As my GR friend Violet rightly points out (see here), those editorial interventions are rather artificial and therefore not entirely successful. But I have to say that what really bothered me was the politically correct content of Smith's references. To be clear, I share her sensitivities, but why does she have to put it on like that, and wave the pedantic finger? She could have applied this so much more subtly. So, all in all, I'm left with mixed feelings. This cycle certainly contains attractive aspects, but I'm afraid it is not overall convincing, at least not to me.
(rating 2.5 stars)
The above citation is located somewhere halfway through this book. Maybe this was done on purpose by Smith: "reader, what do you make of all this that I've written?". Because that is what - I guess - every reader is asking him/herself, reading this fourth part of her seasonal cyclus, with another sequence of strange scenes, continuous dialogues, memories and hallucinations, etc. If Smith's intention was to stress the opacity of reality, she certainly succeeded.
Of course, everyone expects that in this fourth part of her series all elements from the previous seasons come together and the real storylines become clear. In part, that certainly happens. Especially the puzzlers get their money's worth (some of the reviews on this site even give away all the keys). To be honest: this aspect didn’t captivate me. But it is nice to see 104 year old Daniel Gluck reappear in this fourth part, with his associative series of hallucinations and memories that indeed clear up some mysteries from the previous parts. Unfortunately, with other storylines, such as that of Charlotte and Arthur, and especially that of the 'illegal' Hero, this does not come into its own.
Once you accept that you can't place everything, many passages in themselves are quite nice to read. This book, and just about the entire series, is primarily a sequence of intriguing dialogues. So much so, that they reminded me of Rachel Cusk's experiment in her , though the latter has quite a different angle. Some of Smith's dialogues are downright enticing, others seem to be going nowhere. For example, Grace Greenlaw's short conversation, at the little church in Suffolk, with a carpenter unknown to her is absolutely endearing, this is great literature.
There's also a dreamy undertone in most of the scenes in this book, both in the descriptive scenes as in the dialogues, and of course especially in the scenes concerning Daniel Gluck, lying in his bed, offering a continuous stream of memories and hallucinaties. I detected this dreamy, sometimes downright surrealistic undertone also in the previous parts of the seasons-cyclus. And, up to a certain level, this had an attractive, mesmerizing effect.
But then there are the references to current events that Smith also in this part liberally scatters around. In the previous parts, the Brexit, Trump, climate and migration issues were put on the foreground. In ‘Summer� Smith resumes this to a limited extent, but she has also incorporated the pandemic � apparently at the last moment; she did so in the spring of 2020, so at a time when the length and depth of the corona crisis was not yet completely clear. As my GR friend Violet rightly points out (see here), those editorial interventions are rather artificial and therefore not entirely successful. But I have to say that what really bothered me was the politically correct content of Smith's references. To be clear, I share her sensitivities, but why does she have to put it on like that, and wave the pedantic finger? She could have applied this so much more subtly. So, all in all, I'm left with mixed feelings. This cycle certainly contains attractive aspects, but I'm afraid it is not overall convincing, at least not to me.
(rating 2.5 stars)
May 21, 2023
Britanya özelinde yazılmış olsa da aslında bütün ülkelerin günümüzdeki genel toplumsal yapıları ve eğilimleri üzerine muazzam bir dörtleme. Aşırı gerçekçi.
Kısa zamanda daha detaylı bir yorum gelecek ama şimdilik söyleyebileceğim hayran kaldım, öyle güzel.
Kısa zamanda daha detaylı bir yorum gelecek ama şimdilik söyleyebileceğim hayran kaldım, öyle güzel.
September 8, 2020
This was a delightful reading experience, and a recapitulation of-- and variation on-- all of the themes that Smith has so deftly woven throughout the quartet. Not just the obligatory references to an obscure female artist, a Shakespeare play, a Dickens quotation, and a Chaplin movie. But also subtler connections amongst the four novels' characters and events, drawing them deeper into a web of historical parallels. It might be churlish of me to complain about the hastily tacked-on response to Covid as the book was going into press, and the way the middle third (about Daniel's wartime internment camp experience) seemed overly padded out. Other reviewers have convinced me that really need to reread the entire quartet from the beginning as a complete work of art, but the shagginess of Summer didn't measure up to the sheer perfection of Spring.
Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for the ARC, in exchange for this unbiased review.
Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for the ARC, in exchange for this unbiased review.
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