This is the third book I've read in Ali Smith's Seasonal Quartet. They've all been wonderful, but I think this one is my favourite. Not least because it's so unbelievably topical - I was surprised to find references to the current pandemic and then absolutely astonished to find a mention of George Floyd's murder. Current affairs aside, it was another entertaining and thoughtful read, with wonderful characters and of course, Smith's beautiful writing.

That day in October 2016 when there was a thud on my doormat as the postman delivered Autumn by Ali Smith in what was the first instalment of the seasonal quartet. Fast forward four years and the final book has just been released this month. Summer (Hamish Hamilton) really is a magnificent finale.

Since Autumn was released in 2016 the world has gone through a seismic shift with Trump in the Whitehouse, the Brexit vote, refugees, the enviroment and elections in the UK now with Boris Johnson in Number 10 and the Coronavirus pandemic. The world is in trouble. What Ali Smith has achieved in Autumn, Winter, Spring and now Summer is staggering, writing at breakneck speed to take into account our troubled world and in each of the novels troubled characters to match.

There are characters that we have met previously as much as each book is a separate storyline each of the seasonal books are linked via the characters that appear. In Summer we meet the Greenlaw family the siblings are clever but they are split by politics and their mother Grace and the father who left have separated but despite the politics the siblings are close. A family trying to get to grips with who they really are. But there is another brother and sister from Summer’s past and they face a real threat to their lives.
The one aspect of Summer is how Ali Smith has managed to bring the current news agenda into a book that has just hit the bookshelves there is the real shock of Corvid-19 and how it has affected the world and even the death of George Floyd gets into the story. Summer flits between time frames and yet is the most current corvid novel of our times.

We are at an end now of the quartet by Ali Smith but I have a feeling that in the years that lie ahead new readers will discover the four seasons and debate about these current times.
#Summer #NetGalley

NO SPOILERS

I have read the previous three books so was eager to read this final part of Ali Smith’s quartet and oh my, what a finale!

Summer is the most “in the moment” of the four, although, this is true for each in its turn; but Summer feels more so. Smith brings together all the characters amid Brexit, refugees, Trump, Covid-19, lockdown, Black Lives Matter and Boris. By writing of past, shameful atrocities, childhoods past and lost, Smith highlights history repeating itself but this time, with less compassion. The parallels should, frankly, shame us all.

It is skilfully written and as ever, the dialogue is sharp, snappy and flows naturally. Smith is certainly a superb author; everything about Summer is perfect.

However, more than this I am finding difficult to write, perhaps because of the message of the book. I think this quote sums it up for me:

“…human beings will always have to decide whether to be poisonous to others or not…”
When, as people, did we lose our collective humanity?


Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin UK for the complimentary copy of the book, which I have voluntarily reviewed.

This is the final book of the seasonal quartet, and that makes me sad. I have yet to read the first two books, having started reading with Spring. The books are supposed to be read in order, because the same themes weave through them all. However, they can be read as stand alone books.

I loved Spring. Summer, not quite so much. But it is still a wonderful book. The story threads through the book and it's characters, pennies drop as you realise the connection between seemingly unconnected stories.

The background for this book is the arrival of the Corona virus: how it changes our feelings and behaviour. How we cope, or struggle to cope with social isolation. Brexit makes an appearance, questioning how and why we made that decision, pointing out the faultlines and the divisions that have been created. Family connections are explored, strengths and weaknesses play out, and we are encouraged to think about families being more than just relatives.

We also have an immigrants story, moving on from what was covered in Spring, introducing another perspective.

A thought provoking book in many ways. Ali Smith is a wonderfully lyrical writer, which just adds to the evocative nature of these novels.

Highly recommended. I intend to finish the series by reading Autumn and Winter, then next year plan to read them again - in the order in which they were meant to be read!

Thank you to Net Galley and Penguin for giving me a copy of this book to review.

I had heard so much about Ali Smith's qaurtet of books and was excited to read Spring and Summer. However, I reallly didn't "connect" with the narrative at all. The "storyline" made little sense to me and I found it frustrating and confusing. I soldiered on for many pages through what seemed to be random ramblings and a disjointed diatribe about, Brexit, migrants, the Tories, the terrrible state of the West etc. hoping that once I reached the stroy about the family in the main section of the book that some sense of more traditional expostion in a novel would be found but I felt hopelessly confused and lost by the concerns and manner of speaking of the hopelessly middle class city dwelling occupants of the household. This book just wasn't for me. As a member of the hoi polloi I couldn't fathom it.

While not my favourite in the seasonal quartet, I really enjoyed how Ali Smith wrapped up this series. It was strange to read for the first time in fiction about recent events, with parts of this based in May 2020 while the UK is going through COVID-19 lockdown. This also re-visited and brought together characters from Autumn and Winter which I wasn't expecting as so far the books have been relatively separate; I really liked the way this was done as it felt like a natural rounding off of the series.

As the world gets hotter, and the global pandemic rages on, and Black people continue to be murdered by police, Smith’s seasonal quartet comes to a close with summer. But if we are to take any wisdom from these four novels, it is that an ending is also always a beginning.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for supplying a review copy of this novel.

The first thing to note with this novel is what an achievement it has been for Ali Smith to write this quartet of books in such a short space of time, in what has been a very fast shifting set of circumstances within the British Isles.

I find this book a bit of a tricky one to review. I think had I had re-read the other novels before this one I would have had a different reading experience. Ends that have been loose are tied up here, particularly around Daniel Gluck who ties the entire quartet together here. It seems obvious now that we have reached an end to say that the four books should be read as a whole but I haven't done so and this review might be different if I had.

As it is, I did enjoy the novel, but not as much as I did some of the other segments. I found this one quite disjointed, there are some continuity jumps between the past and the future which threw me a bit - I would much rather have spent more time the family of this novel - Grace, Sacha and Robert, and seen more of how there lives are affected by the covid virus (or just the virus as this book has it), rather than hopping around, though I can see why it was done this way - the middle section which includes the most jarring jumps is important for fleshing out back story. There is however a lovely bit about the summer of 1989 which is lovely in it's lyrical descriptions, particularly of a church and it's graveyard, and framed really well within the confines of the story. The problem and perhaps strength of Smith though is that just as it gets into the swing of it's storytelling the novel flits away to something else, and the spell breaks.

This is my biggest problem with the book, it has lots to say but doesn't spend enough time on it. It is being described in certain quarters as a coronavirus novel, but it isn't really. The characters are living through it, but the only mentions of it are factual newspaper like, and the criticisms of how the government are dealing with it are no more than could be read on twitter or in certain of our newspapers on a daily basis. Perhaps it's difficult to analyse an event that is still ongoing, but I just felt that there wasn't enough actual depth to this element. The same goes with the characters, we get a good deal of exploration in terms of human values and feeling, but it always feels slightly removed, and a little forced - as soon as we start getting somewhere we move away and are left with a feeling of something unresolved, of a surface lightly scratched but never fully explored. Perhaps that is the point and we are meant to fill in the gaps for ourselves and if that is the case than I failed to do so.

Ultimately then, as I said at the beginning of this review, I feel like reading the four books one after another would be the best way to approach this, and reading only this one cannot give a true flavour, but my abiding feeling from just reading this one, is a nagging feeling of something missed. It never really goes anywhere and says less, I think, then it meant to.

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. 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: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/w....

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.

Summer by Ali Smith concludes her 'seasons' quartet, which began with Autumn in October 2016. To have completed this 4th book less than 4 years later seems to me a monumental achievement in its own right, and this is underscored by the fact that although all four books share Smith's characteristic style and playfulness – she is just dazzlingly adroit with language – each can be read as a stand-alone as well. To some extent I'd say this applies least to Summer, which unsurprisingly perhaps seeks to weave together and revisit some themes and characters from the first three books and in that respect my only caveat with Summer would be to advise any reader to start with Autumn and work from there. But at the same time, given all that has happened globally this year, it is a wonderfully unusual and, at times, surreal reading experience to enjoy a novel that references so many ongoing themes, such as lockdown, protest movements, coronavirus etc amidst wider consideration of freedom, the impact of the past and, where we as a society potentially head from here.

I am admittedly a huge fan of Ali Smith and think she is unquestionably one of our most skilful and interesting modern authors – it's too soon to tell but I strongly suspect this quartet will be read and discussed for years to come, and on a personal level I am looking forward to re-reading all four books in a few years' time in closer proximity to one another (I had the good fortune to read each of these four novels within a month or two of their original release).

So...what are you waiting for? If you've read the first three, Summer is satisfyingly similar whilst providing something resembling a (loose) conclusion. If not, I would recommend both Summer itself and the entire quartet unreservedly for anyone interested in modern literary writing that is topical, moving and in many respects unlike anything else currently available.

Advance reader copy supplied by NetGalley.

Ali Smith's Autumn was released almost four years ago - just as I had (finally) left university after my Master's Degree, moved cities and was settling into a graduate job. Since then the Seasonal Quartet has not only marked the years between Brexit and Covid, but also my mid-twenties, making these books incredibly important to me personally. So for the final book, Summer, I was waiting with baited breath, more excited than I have ever been for a book release.

Could it possibly live up to the pressure of three astounding predecessors? Current world events are moving faster than ever before - could Smith have fully captured the pandemic and lockdown in so short a space of time? Will this connect the dots from the Easter eggs hidden away in the other books?

The answer to all of these questions is of course. Summer has the same witty observant social commentary intertwined with human connection and interpersonal lives as the rest of the series. Incredibly, almost miraculously, it captures Covid in all it's nuance, with lockdown, and the furores over PPE and care homes, and even goes so far as to acknowledge more recent events such as the death of George Floyd. Cleverly, as with some of the other books, the story, or bulk of it, doesn't actually take place in Summer, but looks towards it, and embodies it in many ways. This book is about life and hope, long days, heady days of youth, mythical, lost and forgotten summers. It is about the simultaneous endlessness and transience of the season, the weight of expectation we put on it and what it truly means in nature. Smith is expert at digging into these meanings and connotations, finding linguistic connections, and reminding us of not only the importance but of the art in language.

Art has always featured heavily in these novels, with each specifically tied to a Shakespeare play, Dickens novel and artist. For Summer this is The Winter's Tale - as the novel itself highlights there is always an element of winter in summer, an acknowledgement of the endless cycle of the seasons. This novel's Dickens reference is David Copperfield and so much of the novel is linked to that summer notion of the bildungsroman - we see characters at that age of self-discovery and learning who you are. Smith has chosen Lorenza Mazzetti as the artist for this book, an artist with many mediums, who links to wider elements of the story's conversation about identity, history, and national politics as well as art itself.

As well as the astute environmental, political and social observations, and musings on art Smith gives us a real story, with a multitude of complex characters. In this book we meet the Greenlaws - the idealistic 16 year old Sacha, her precocious 13 year old brother Robert and their mum, Grace. This new cast of characters intersect with those from past books, and more of those wonderful links and connections between people develop. But don't think this book will fall into the trap of being too twee, neat and coincidental - we don't get everything explained, and even where we see links, character's themselves don't giving the novel a wonderful dramatic irony.

The choice to end on Summer was a smart one - Spring gave us hope for the future, and Summer reminds us that while it is fleeting and autumn will come again - that there will also always be summer. Where SA4A loomed in the first two novels and came to the fore in Spring, in Summer Smith extends that hope, and shows how we can work and connect with others to make a better future. Not only this but through Summer Smith shows us how art can be used to achieve this too. Summer brings a powerful conclusion to a series which will become classics of our time.

In the midst of Ali’s Smith’s Summer a character reflects on “how we overload summer most out of all the seasons, I mean with our expectations of it.” If the reader detects a hint of authorial trepidation that this novel might not live up to the three preceding it, they needn’t worry. As the concluding volume to Smith’s “Seasonal Quartet,” Summer is easily as entrancing and lyrical as those that came before it, and Smith’s musical language and brave, brilliant, imperfect characters continue to delight and beguile.

In an act of sheer publishing industry chutzpah, Summer is set practically in the present moment, beginning with scenes in February 2020 and concluding with a letter written…last month (July, surely well after the manuscript was submitted). Smith set out to write four novels in four years, but the fact that she stretched herself to not just address the Covid-19 pandemic but to make it central to several interactions and plot points is staggering. Nor does it feel shoehorned in - as with the featuring of Brexit, Donald Trump, rising nationalist movements, Climate Change, and anti-immigration policies throughout the quartet, the politics of this novel feel utterly natural — they are there because they are here, now.

One of the great joys of Smith’s quartet has been her recuperation of histories largely lost from conventional historical narrative. In Autumn her foregrounding of pop artist Pauline Boty and retelling of the Profumo Affair from Christine Keeler’s perspective reframed history and performance with a female focus. In Winter the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp is made real for a generation to which it is largely forgotten yet should be wholly relevant. Spring highlights artist Tacita Dean and writers Katherine Mansfield and Rainer Maria Rilke, and takes readers inside a contemporary immigrant detention centre. In Summer, the forgotten history is that of the interment camps that dotted the UK during WWII, where thousands of German and Italian UK residents were held. Imprisonment in different forms appears throughout the series, but each time the novels highlight how human creativity and ingeniousness thrives despite it. In a flashback to his time in the Hutchinson internment camp on the Isle of Man, Daniel Gluck recalls composing a song and envisioning the music by arranging socks on the camp fence - the socks as notation and the fence as the stave. All four novels are a testament to the power of art, and importantly, a testament to how human connection is the engine of that power.

There is closure in this story, but it is often oblique. Suspected links between characters are confirmed and new ones are hinted at. Plot must often be inferred and key meetings and moments are elided. But my god, it is gorgeous.

Ali Smith: Summer

This is the fourth and final book in Ali Smith’s Four Seasons cycle, about Brexit and much else. Indeed, the book gets on to the much else fairly promptly. It includes the Windrush scandal, the election of Boris Johnson as prime minister in 2019 and Dominic Cummings, the Australian wildfires of that year, environmental issues generally, Greta Thunberg, Trump and the religious right (God says that nobody, nobody who truly believes, could ever say anything bad or denigratory or damaging about our president), Brexit, George Floyd and Black Lives Matter and of course the Internet. More importantly, it deals with the coronavirus, lockdown and the wearing of masks. Interestingly, most of these are not named (Windrush, Johnson, Cummings, Trump) so you may wonder what/who they are if you are not too familiar with British and world politics of the time.

We start by following the Greenlaw family, who live in Brighton. Mother Grace, a former actress, is bringing up her two children, Robert, aged thirteen, and Sacha, aged sixteen. She is separated from her husband, Jeff, who, surprisingly, lives next door, with his girlfriend, Ashley. His business is not doing well.

Much of the focus is on the two children. Sacha is very keen on environmental issues. She refuses (on the whole), for example, to travel in a petrol-driven vehicle. Robert is the more interesting one, in many respects. He is vicious and malicious but in an intelligent way. His role model seems to be the aforementioned Dominic Cummings though his interest in pornography (he watched a bit of porn like any self respecting 13 year old boy is ancestrally and congenitally bound to do) and has lustful feelings towards a thirty year old woman who visits the house, shows he has a touch of the Boris Johnsons.

He spends much of his time carrying out clever but malicious pranks upon his mother and sister who get annoyed but more or less tolerate him. His favourite online game is ABUSEHEAP which seems to focus on torture. He seems to be a loner, a criminal (he shoplifts) and very intelligent and observant. He is often in trouble at school and has no qualms about playing truant. He has also been in trouble with the police. He is also very keen on Einstein and somewhat obsessed about the fact that Einstein came to Britain, though apparently never visited Brighton. In short, like Dominic Cummings, he is a disruptor.

There are lots of discussion of current issues between the characters, such as the imprisonment of undocumented immigrants (a topic in the news in the UK; Sacha writes to one of them), cancel culture, poverty and some of the outrageous views expressed by said Cummings, which Robert often supports.

As in any good modern novel, language is key. Ashley is writing a book (which Robert has managed to sneak a look at) about language and, in particular, how many words have changed their meaning, particularly in the current political context. However, Ashley now seems to have stopped talking, including to Jeff. it is not clear why.

The issue of language and therefore communication (or lack of it) will remain key. We get the story of two deaf mutes who are talking intently to each other with their hands and by watching the shapes each other’s mouths or faces make. They do not realise that there children behind them mocking them but, as they cannot hear the children but can understand one another, they are content.

The issue of language is not new. One of the key stories involve Daniel Gluck. He is a German national but came to the UK as a child but neither he nor his father bothered obtaining UK nationality so, when World War II starts, they are enemy aliens. They are detained and sent to a camp in the Isle of Man. It is he who says Everything means something quite other now.

Gluck is still alive, aged 104, when the book opens in 2020. His experience, detention as a foreign immigrant, is replicated, as we see the undocumented immigrants detained in the UK in 2020. As mentioned Sacha writes to them. When the virus strikes, many of them are released to avoid overcrowding but have nowhere to go but, an elderly lady, Iris, with a large house takes many of them in. It this spirit, the sense of community responsibility that Smith points to as the positive, in the face of all the doom and gloom which she also mentions.

Community spirit is just one of the positives and this and other positives are key to this and the other three books. Nature and love of nature, which include environmental responsibility, is also important. We learn about swifts and more than one character enjoys nature during the book.

Art is also key. Many of those imprisoned in the Isle of Man during the war were German artists (in the broadest sense of the term) and try hard to continue their art, even in the confines of the camp, including one artist whom Hitler had personally condemned.

Each of the books had one key and relatively unknown female artist who appears and who is hailed as a guiding spirit. In this case it is Lorenza Mazzetti who had a particularly horrific early life and who comes to England where she becomes a film-maker and writer. We learn a lot about her.

Shakespeare is also key as regards art and our key play here is The Winter’s Tale. It is one of Grace’s earliest acting jobs and we follow her experience acting in this play.

The other key positive is a sound relationship. Many of the characters struggle with this but some certainly succeed. Often the enemy is the state – Mazetti and the Germans, the detained immigrants in the UK. It is the sense of community, of belonging that are important to them as, of course, to most of us.

Charlotte, a fairly key character in this book says, when her relationship breaks up Nothing more than an alone again naturally no matter how (the reference is to a Gilbert O’Sullivan song) and she very much bemoans her loss, finding redemption in helping Iris, the elderly lady (and aunt of her ex) with the immigrants in her large house.

Iris is just one of the characters we have met in previous books. SA4A, the security company that runs the immigrant centres and clearly based on G4S is another, They clearly represent the dark side for Smith.

This is not a plot-based novel, though there are many different stories which often (loosely) link up. We jump from story to story but while Smith uses the stories to make her points she does not rely solely on them and is happy to openly condemn Brexit, Dominic Cummings, the detention of immigrants, climate change denial and other unpleasantnesses of modern Britain and the modern world.

This has been a brilliant tetralogy and not just because it was one of the first Brexit novels and this one may well be one of the first coronavirus novels. Smith has superbly dissected modern Britain, pointing out the evils and flaws of society and of politicians but, at the same time, she has also pointed out what is positive. Brexit and Dominic Cummings bad, art and community spirit good. I can certainly support that.

There’s so much to love about Ali Smith. Social insight: spot on. Political commentary: forthright. Big serious topics: fearless. Historical / cultural scope: eclectic. Emotional resonance: deep. Human observation: piercing, tender, witty. Playing with form and words: wild and delightful. Her 'Hotel World' opens memorably with a girl falling down a lift shaft to her death and her joyful stream of consciousness as she plummets, and I have that sensation of plunging freefall whenever I read her now - wheeee......

'Summer' does all the things that Ali Smith does best. She is absolutely serious about serious topics: the bitter fractured UK, Brexit, refugees, racism, privatisation, government by liars and destroyers. And not just current, but right up to the minute zeitgeist (there is lockdown, and the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 - I read this in July 2020). And not just zeitgeist, but timeless stuff: transience, ageing, memory, human connection, people trying to make sense of [all this]. And art history, film history, WW2 history, Einstein. To cover [all this] - and a lot more besides - without the novel feeling crammed or contrived, or the reader feeling overloaded, tells of the effortlessness of reading her.

Yet for a writer who does serious topics head on there’s such a playfulness about her writing. Partly I think from the lovely collage she creates from dialogue, text messages, film excerpts, book extracts, letters, streams of consciousness, etymology, puns, jokes, quotes, a few vivid recurring images and some beautiful turns of phrase; no boggy description or narration. It scoops you up and whirls you along at such a pace that you don’t notice that it’s 2am and you’ve read a third of the book in one go without even realising (where you = I, obviously).

The ease of reading is deceptive though. You breeze through her airy text, but then look back at what you’ve just read and think God, there was a lot in that. My first thought on finishing 'Summer' was that I needed to go back and read it sloooowly, and the preceding volumes, because it’s so hard not to skim and enjoy the whooshy ride for its own sake, and miss the densely packed landscape that we’ve whooshed through - the links between characters and within history, motifs, symbols, patterns, the weight of the serious stuff, and her artistry in weaving together so much into such a satisfying whole.

Although 'Summer' brings together narratives from the previous three season books, it’s probably not necessary to have read them first. There are strands that intertwine with each other and with the preceding volumes but it’s not a conclusion as such - seasons being cyclical, and endings are always beginnings after all. And it’s not a series to read for A Story, more for the sensation of being carried aloft by air currents, plunging, rising, cruising, whooshing onwards like the swifts motif: to relish the rush of the ride and the view, swooping in close then high up, scanning past, present and future, and to marvel at Ali Smith’s phenomenal creativity and beautiful humanity.

4,5 out of 5 stars, as Spring remains my favourite of the four and I gave that one 5. I feel like immediately reading the whole quartet again and really get all the links and connections, but alas it's Booker time ;-)
A very topical book about the chaos of our times: climate change, the coronavirus, Brexit and politics, racism and class differences; this book has got it all and Ali Smith handles in brilliantly!
Thank you Penguin and Netgalley for the ARC.

This is a brilliant ending to this quartet, and I cannot believe how quickly Ali Smith has written these, and smoothly incorporated recent events. I have only read Autumn previously, which I found a bit heavy-going, but I can see the same themes of remembering the past and linking it to today's political situation in Britain. In Summer, a family is split by their political opinions and ages - the divorced parents voted leave and remain, the brother is nihilistic and keen to wind others up through taking provocative viewpoints on sexism and racism, and the sister is an idealistic environmentalist. However, each of the characters grows and changes, and we see why they hold their views. The catalyst is meeting a couple who are taking a trip to the seaside to meet Daniel, a 104 year old who reminisces about his time being interned as an undesirable alien during the second world war. There are many threads to the story but they come together very satisfactorily.

What a glorious ending to Seasons Quartet! I really love Ali Smith's writing, the easy, effortless style that reads almost as if she's talking to you. As the other books in the series, this is a book about everything. Racism, the ignorance of people, degeneration, I felt this was the most complicated structure compared to other 3 seasons.

I have read, and treasured the first three of Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet, so was very excited to be able to review ‘Summer.’’

As with the other books, ‘Summer’’ is set in contemporary Britain; so Brexit, COVID-19 and the leadership of Boris Johnson loom large. Smith also focusses on the internment of German citizens in Britain during the Second World War, on art and on the theories of Einstein. This makes for a heady mix, which at times is witty and intelligent and at others (as a fan it pains me to say this) is a bit preachy.

The parts of the novel I loved the most were when the characters reminisced about the past. Daniel remembers his internment, Grace reflects back on her theatrical career and Charlotte remembers her lost relationship with Art. These parts felt very alive and I was absorbed. However there are long passages where it feels as if ‘Summer’ is there to make a point, rather than being something that in enjoyable to read. Sasha’s relationship with her brother and his ‘going off the rails’, felt forced and I wasn’t entirely sure what they illustrated beyond being mouth pieces for Smith’s views.

Needless to say though, I will be buying a print copy of ‘Summer, as it will look beautiful on my bookshelf with the other three copies. However as the ending of the quartet, it isn’t the finale I was hoping for.

Oh dear! This is the third Ali Smith Seasons book I have read and I’m no further ahead in ‘getting it’.
I found with all three of them that there were parts of each book I loved and then other bits where I just couldn’t keep my attention on them and found myself reading faster to get to a ‘better bit’.
I can appreciate Smith’s writing but yet again, I just don’t think she’s my cup of tea.

* Thanks to Penguin UK and Netgalley for the ARC

As one of Smith's characters says ' What art does is, it exists...and then because we encounter it, we remember we exist too. And that one day we won't.' The Seasonal quartet has been a masterclass in contemporary writing, and the creative art. Watching Smith adjust to the unexpected twists that existence threw in her path has been a fascinating experience, as if fate had become an overly-enthusiastic co-writer - social media, fake news, lie culture, racism, sexism, climate crisis, Brexit and finally, in a plot twist that even the most obvious hack would have avoided as being too histrionic, - Covid-19. Smith employs the raw material and navigates it majestically. Summer may bring the series to a conclusion of sorts, but it is open, accepting of an undetermined but hopeful future and changing seasons.
Like the Hockney paintings on each cover, the landscape of the novels change and adapt to the elements but the essence remains unchanged.
Smith's themes of hope, faith in humanity and simple everyday heroism run through her cast of characters who, as the series progresses, appear to offer some hint of a large complex narrative that they are all interacting within. Other outliers like Lorenza Mazetti, Greta Thunberg, Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin and Shakespeare offer ciphers, keys to understanding and accepting existence, or suggesting pathways to change. To be able to do all this and more, in a series of books which are seductively readable and effortlessly enjoyable is the mark of a great writer. Smith's characters are real; we share components with each and every one of them; our fears, dreams and desires are similar, even when our circumstances are so individual.
To use one Smith's own metaphors her books are the 'inflatable life jackets' that help us to escape 'Grief Island' when 'the weather roughens'. But they are also art at its best, and will be appreciated as such in years to come, with their changing seasons.