The second installment in Smith's seasonal cycle sees her turning her talents to winter, and there's no more seasonal topic than a dysfunctional family at Christmas.
"Winter" starts with musings on death, as writer Art, trawls Google to see what comes up as dead - from God, to nature, to love and beyond. However this winter is all about regeneration, reminiscing and reconciliation, as Art visits his mother, inviting her estranged sister to visit. He also hires a woman called Lux to pretend to be his girlfriend, Charlotte as they've fallen out. So far, so dysfunctional.
As the sisters are reunited, all the old wounds reopen but find ways to heal that neither of them expected, leaving the reader with a festive glow that the first part of the book in no way indicated was on the horizon. Aunt Iris has the more interesting background of the two of them, as a lifelong protestor from her earlier days at Greenham Common, to more lately helping Syrian refugees in Greece. The story even manages to include very recent news stories around Brexit, Grenfell Tower and President Trump.
Throughout Smith's uniquely wonderful writing style prevails. Creating characters just the right side of believable, even if they do see floating heads at their window and chunks of coastline hovering above the dinner table. I can't wait to read what Spring brings.

Winter is the second of Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet. Autumn was hugely successful and I loved it so I was expecting to read a novel of the same quality.

The novel is the story of Sophie, Iris and Arthur as they gather at Sophie’s house in Cornwall for Christmas. They are a somewhat fragmented family thrown together by circumstances rather than choice, all with different politics, different ideas. Just how well will that all get on?

So who are the three main protagonists.

Firstly there is Sophie. Sophie seemed quite detached, stuck in her ways, unwilling to conform, stubbornly refusing to enter the modern world.

Sister Iris is her complete opposite. Easy going, liberal, broadminded, not averse to texting and using the internet.

Then there is Arthur, Sophie’s son. Arthur is weathering the storm of a breakup with girlfriend Charlotte, who has taken over his Twitter account, posting ridiculous and nonsensical text. In the absence of a girlfriend to take home he approaches a young woman, Lux, at a bus stop and offers her £1000 to accompany him and pretend to be Charlotte.

On arrival at home, Arthur is distressed to find his mother in a bit of a state, and Lux phones Iris, who arrives to take charge of Christmas.

Sophie and Iris have a fraught relationship and have not seen each for many years. and each begins to remember their past. Smith uses this to highlight the huge chasm that exists between the two sisters. Their outlook on life, their politics, are so far apart there is little wonder they have not conversed in the intervening years.

To me they represented modern day. Sophie, unwilling to change, a successful business woman and by all accounts conventional. Iris, has flung herself into the modern world, a strident force of political activism, one of the original women to protest at Greenham Common. Their lives took vastly different directions and it is only now as they attempt to reconcile that they slowly begin to understand one another.

Lux’s role, other than being the stand in girlfriend, is the one thing that unites them all. She seems to understand each of them, particularly Sophie, pointing out how Art might reach out to his mother and perhaps improve their fractured relationship. Lux also represents modern immigration, the transiency of it, and the difficulties they face.

What I love about Smith is her ability to reflect on modern society and politics without actually ramming it down our throats. There are references to Grenfell Tower, Donald Trump and Brexit. It certainly makes the reader think about how we all fit in and what it means for us.

Yet, Winter is not a novel solely based on politics, for me it was more a story of a fractured family who have to learn to live with their individual differences, that often become more exaggerated over Christmas. The characters are wonderfully realised and the imagery of winter brilliantly done, yet it did not captivate me as much as Autumn. I was particularly enamoured with Sophie, and I found the whole head imagery a little too much. It was good, very good but not as good as Autumn.

I await Spring with huge anticipation!!

Thank you to Hamish Hamilton and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review.

Estranged sisters Sophia and Iris are brought together one Christmas at the instigation of Sophia’s son Art but it’s unlikely that it’s going to be a happy season of goodwill, not least because their Christmas festivities are complicated by Art’s fake girlfriend Lux, whom he pays to impersonate the girlfriend he has just broken up with. I never could understand why he felt the need to pretend in this way, and that’s just one example of how I didn’t find this latest volume in Ali Smith’s proposed quartet of novels as satisfying and rewarding as the first, Autumn. Smith seems angrier here and although her trademark wit is always in evidence, her scattergun approach occasionally comes across as heavy-handed and perhaps too wide-ranging. Through her characters she comments on political events past and present and of course there’s plenty to be angry about, not least Trump’s election and all the fake news, lies and deceptions that we have become used to. Smith’s world is a dark one and the dysfunctional family she portrays is part of that darkness. Her acute social observation and pin-point accuracy in depicting our world allows for some lighter moments, thankfully, and two of my favourite scenes are Sophia’s visit to the bank and to the optician. But I felt that the didacticism made for a less subtle approach this time and occasionally I felt a little wearied by it all. Even the choice of names was a bit too obvious and the characters too extreme to identify with. This was a book I admired rather than enjoyed, and whilst I appreciated the cleverness would have preferred a bit less of it and a bit more humanity

Oh dear. I really liked Autumn and was looking forward to this a lot, but I'm afraid I didn't get on with it nearly so well.

After her post-Brexit state-of-the-nation assessment in Autumn, Winter sees Ali Smith considering issues like the depersonalisation through technology and disengagement from global issues which she sees (probably accurately) in Britain. There are structural similarities to Autumn, with an older person whose mind may not be wholly reliable forming a relationship of sorts with a younger person with the consequent engagement of ideas and differences of behaviour. There are also quite a few dream sequences (never a favourite of mine) and Smith's trademark quirky structures.

Sadly, it didn't work for me this time. The weirdnesses seemed an unnecessary distraction and the structural tricks – for example, giving the whole of one side of a conversation followed by the other side without interspersing them as they would have taken place – often seemed mannered and rather clever-for-the-sake-of-it. Smith writes excellent prose, of course, creating convincing atmosphere and vivid characters so it's not hard to read. This time, though, I just felt that in spite of some quite sharp pieces of observation there wasn't all that much original substance behind the style. I agree with much of what she's saying, but for me it wasn't really worth spending so much time and stylistic effort in saying it again.

Plainly, others disagree and have enjoyed Winter very much, but I found it a let-down.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)