Ali Smith's latest book 'Summer' addresses hot topics

Ali Smith said that the concept behind her seasonal quartet, which comprises "Autumn," "Winter," "Spring," and now "Summer," was to emulate Victorian novelists such as Charles Dickens and create something new about characters facing up to the world around them.

Smith’s series concludes with the sublime "Summer," which was started and completed earlier this awful year. 

"Summer" takes in the fractious events of the coronavirus pandemic, lockdown, needless care home deaths, and the Black Lives Matter protests about the death of George Floyd.

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The opening section of the novel focuses on a family in Brighton who are a microcosm of our divided Britain.

Mother Grace voted Leave, her now separated husband Jeff — whose business has been “brex-f***ed” — voted Remain.

The Greenlaw family were split “as if with a cheese wire, sliced right through the everyday to a bitterness nobody knew what to do with.”

Throughout the novel, Smith scatters beguiling reflections on Albert Einstein, Italian filmmaker Lorenza Mazzetti, sculptress Barbara Hepworth, Shakespeare, the relative merits of silent comedians Max Linder and Charlie Chaplin, the habits of starlings and even the charm of Nick Drake’s folk album "Bryter Layter."

My favourite section of the novel is one in which Grace takes a country walk to revisit a village where she once enjoyed an uncomplicatedly beautiful summer afternoon in the English countryside with a kind stranger.

“We are always looking for summer … we’re always looking for the full open leaf, the open warmth, the promise that one day we’ll 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.”

Creating fiction about contemporary times in a series about the continual passing of the seasons gives Smith the chance to blend the short and long view of life, offering poignant reminders about context in this fleeting existence of ours.

Although "Summer" is angry and sorrowful at times, Smith’s marvellous novel is not without hope and the promise of transformation. And what a thought that is in summer 2020.

The Independent