Review
“Smith’s genius in these three books has been to use art and literature to navigate through the froth of the present moment with such a light touch that she rarely seems to lecture. . . . Florence is a classic Smith trope: the stranger who can reawaken characters’ dormant imaginations and emotions, break the frozen sea within. She is also, as she points out when told off for naivety in questioning society’s attitude to national borders, just a 12-year-old girl—‘What do you expect?’ With schoolchildren currently leading climate change protests, her inclusion in the novel is a beautiful piece of synchronicity, and the sparky, buzzy banter between her and Brit is brilliantly done. . . . This is a novel that contains multitudes, and the wonder is that Smith folds so much in, from visionary nature writing to Twitter obscenities, in prose that is so deceptively relaxed. Jokes detonate throughout, from the bleak to the whimsical, as surprising and moving connections are revealed between all three novels. . . . As her Seasonal Quartet moves towards completion her own role in British fiction looks ever more vital.” —Justine Jordan, The Guardian
“Spring, the third installment in Ali Smith’s series of novels about modern Britain, bursts with the bruised hope of redemption. Smith’s seasonal quartet of novels is a bold and brilliant experiment. Starting in 2015, the author embarked on writing four novels with a tight turnaround, handing in the manuscripts as the printing press was humming. . . . For the stately world of literary publishing, this pace is revolutionary. The latest novel turns its gaze on the migrant crisis and the rise of nationalism. It burns with moral urgency at the same time as feeling timeless and playful. . . . What has happened to Britain? It’s a question that echoes through the seasonal series and reaches a perfectly pitched hymn of fury in Spring. And it’s not just Britain. . . . Smith writes of our globalized world. . . . The ending isn’t straightforward sunshine, but we get a glimpse of the moral power of the young generation, ordinary people’s timeless urge to resist injustice, and the enduring consolations of art. Spring is an astonishing accomplishment and a book for all seasons. “ —Ceri Radford, The Independent (London)
“The third part of Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet, Spring, is timely not only because of its March release date, but because it weaves a story around the most pressing issues of our time: Brexit, the internet, the environment and immigration. . . . Smith finds delicious new tragic and comic moments everywhere. . . . Despite the stark indictment of humanity’s evils that this bubbling, babbling brook of a book contains, the real story is the eternal, deep pulse of nature doing its thing, oblivious to our sordid ways. Nature, in Smith’s hands, is a strange sort of mother, as are all the other women in Spring: unsentimental, wise, foul-mouthed and kind. Not unlike their creator. She tells stories in a voice you can’t help but listen to.” —Melissa Katsoulis, The Times of London
“Smith is a masterful storyteller. With just a few words she can build engaging worlds and identifiable characters. . . . What makes Smith extraordinary is the way she layers her work. The structure of Spring is fluid—she weaves in different voices and modernist riffs that come out of nowhere and stop you in your tracks. . . . Through her account of unlikely friendships, Smith brings human values to the fore. Savor it, because there is just one installment left.” —Susannah Butter, The Evening Standard
“All is revealed in the spring of 2019. As in the first two books, Smith alludes to contemporary issues, such as #MeToo, Brexit, and fake news, but on immigrants she grabs a megaphone. . . . Roots, shoots, and buds abound amid myriad references to death and rebirth, from the Hanged Man pub to Orpheus, Norse mythology's Ragnarok, and Shelley's ‘The Cloud.’ The three novels have a few common elements—the pain and pleasure of creativity; the pairing of an older adult and an intelligent youth; the showcasing of an English female visual artist, here Tacita Dean—but they are self-contained and increasingly urgent in their hope that art might bring change. . . . Smith's work is always challenging and always rewarding.” —Kirkus Reviews [starred review]
“The third book in Ali Smith’s quartet is her best yet, a dazzling hymn to hope, uniting the past and present . . . It feels like two things are happening here. First, Smith is increasingly recognizing the narrative possibilities of this new type of storytelling, finding deeper and more compelling ways of getting under the skin of her times. There’s something else, though. While reading Spring, I became suddenly aware of the extraordinary meta-novel—the year—that the quartet will form once it’s complete, and how thrilling and important that book will be . . . Now it’s possible to recognize quite how dazzling the interplay of ideas and images between the four books will be . . . There’s so much to say about this luminous, generous, hope-filled novel . . . All of this rich material feels amplified by the echoes and resonances that thrum between Spring and its predecessors. [Smith] has always been a profoundly moral writer, but in this series of novels she is doing something more than merely anatomizing the iniquities of her age. She’s lighting us a path out of the nightmarish now.” —Alex Preston, The Observer
Praise for the Seasonal Quartet:
“Ali Smith is flat-out brilliant . . . [She] has balanced darkness with light, blackness with hope.” —NPR
“A wonder of deep and accommodating compassion.” —The Washington Post
“Gorgeous . . . Utterly original.” —The New York Times Book Review
“A triumph of imagination.” —The Atlantic
“The profound pleasure of these books is their near miracle.” —The Boston Globe
“Brilliant, breathtakingly immediate . . . While this seasonal quartet has its angry and organized passages . . . its creator wants to remind us that the pendulum can swing back and that one day the sun will return.” —Slate
About the Author
Ali Smith is the author of many works of fiction, including the novel Hotel World, which was short-listed for both the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize as well as winning the Encore Award and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award. The Accidental won the Whitbread Award and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Her story collections include Free Love, which won a Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award and a Scottish Arts Council Award.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Now what we don’t want is Facts. What we want is bewilderment. What we want is repetition. What we want is repetition. What we want is people in power saying the truth is not the truth. What we want is elected members of parliament saying knife getting heated stuck in her front and twisted things like bring your own noose we want governing members of parliament in the house of commons shouting kill yourself at opposition members of parliament we want powerful people saying they want other powerful people chopped up in bags in my freezer we want muslim women a joke in a newspaper column we want the laugh we want the sound of that laugh behind them everywhere they go. We want the people we call foreign to feel foreign we need to make it clear they can’t have rights unless we say so. What we want is outrage offence distraction. What we need is to say thinking is elite knowledge is elite what we need is people feeling left behind disenfranchised what we need is people feeling. What we need is panic we want subconscious panic we want conscious panic too. We need emotion we want righteousness we want anger. We need all that patriotic stuff. What we want is same old Scandal Of The Alcoholic Mothers Danger Of The Daily Aspirin but with more emergency Nein Nein Nein we need a hashtag #linedrawn we want Give Us What We Want Or We’ll Walk we want fury we want outrage we want words at their most emotive antisemite is good nazi is great paedo will really do it perverted foreigner illegal we want gut reaction we want Age Test For ‘Child Migrants’ 98% Demand Ban New Migrants Gunships To Stop Migrants How Many More Can We Take Bolt Your Doors Hide Your Wives we want zero tolerance. We need news to be phone size. We need to bypass mainstream media. We need to look past the interviewer talk straight to camera. We need to send a very clear strong unmistakable message. We need newsfeed shock. We need more newsfeed shock come on quick next newsfeed shock pull the finger out we want torture images. We need to get to them we need them to think we can get to them get the word lynching to anyone not white. We want rape threats death threats 24/7 to black / female members of parliament no just women doing anything public anyone doing anything public we don’t like we need How Dare She / How Dare He / How Dare They. We need to suggest the enemy within. We need enemies of the people we want their judges called enemies of the people we want their journalists called enemies of the people we want the people we decide to call enemies of the people called enemies of the people we want to say loudly over and over again on as many tv and radio shows as possible how they’re silencing us. We need to say all the old stuff like it’s new. We need news to be what we say it is. We need words to mean what we say they mean. We need to deny what we’re saying while we’re saying it. We need it not to matter what words mean. We need a good old slogan Britain no England / America / Italy / France / Germany / Hungary / Poland / Brazil / [insert name of country] First. We need the dark web money algorithms social media. We need to say we’re doing it for freedom of speech. We need bots we need cliche we need to offer hope. We need to say it’s a new era the old era’s dead their time’s over it’s our time now. We need to smile a lot while we say it we need to laugh on camera ha ha ha thump man laughing his head off hear that factory whistle at the end of the day that factory’s dead we’re the new factory whistle we’re what this country’s needed all along we’re what you need we’re what you want.
What we want is need.
What we need is want.
That time again, is it? (Shrugs.)
None of it touches me. It’s nothing but water and dust. You’re nothing but bonedust and water. Good. More useful to me in the end.
I’m the child who’s been buried in leaves. The leaves rot down: here I am.
Or picture a crocus in snow. See the ring of the thaw round the crocus? That’s the door open into the earth. I’m the green in the bulb and the moment of split in the seed, the unfurl of the petal, the dabber of ends of the branches of trees with the green as if green is alight.
The plants that push up through the junk and the plastic, earlier, later, they’re coming, regardless. The plants shift beneath you regardless, the people in sweatshops, the people out shopping, the people at desks in the light off their screens or scrolling their phones in the surgery waiting rooms, the protesters shouting, wherever, whatever the city or country, the light shifts, the flowers nod next to the corpseheap and next to the places you live and the places you drink yourselves stupid or happy or sad and the places you pray to your gods and the big supermarkets, the people on motorways speeding past verges and scrubland like nothing is happening. Everything is. The flowerheads open all over the flytip. The light shifts across your divides, round the people with passports, the people with money, the people with nothing, past sheds and canals and cathedrals, your airports, your graveyards, whatever you bury, whatever you dig up to call it your history or drill down to use up for money, the light shifts regardless.
The truth is a kind of regardless.
The winter’s a nothing to me.
Do you think I don’t know about power? You think I was born green?
I was.
Mess up my climate, I’ll fuck with your lives. Your lives are a nothing to me. I’ll yank daffodils out of the ground in December. I’ll block up your front door in April with snow and blow down that tree so it cracks your roof open. I’ll carpet your house with the river.
But I’ll be the reason your own sap’s reviving. I’ll mainline the light to your veins.
What’s under your road surface now?
What’s under your house’s foundations?
What’s warping your doors?
What’s giving your world the fresh colours? What’s the key to the song of the bird? What’s forming the beak in the egg?
What’s sending the thinnest of green shoots through that rock so the rock starts to split?
Real strength was a matter of sensing something alive in you bigger than just your own breathing.Highlighted by 108 Kindle readers
