Next door, their father lives with his girlfriend, Ashley, who is writing a book about the power of words and has stopped speaking altogether. She lives in an unusual family setup with her mother, Grace, and her brother, Robert, who seems to be auditioning for the role of a 13-year-old Nigel Farage. The novel is initially presented through the perspective of one of those protesting against “the political cultivation of indifference”, Sacha Greenlaw, a 16-year-old from Brighton. “Not everybody said it… Millions and millions of people across the country, and across the world, saw the lying, and the mistreatment 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…” “Everyone said: so?” But then one of the deep themes of these books takes over, and the voice moves from lethargy to engagement. This one is initially jaded and world-weary. We start off, as with each of the books, with a kind of prose poem, a choric voice that speaks for all of us. And yet so frantic were the headlines of 2020, so febrile the global temperature, I began to wonder if there was too much reality even for this supremely subtle and supple writer. She says: yes there’s Brexit, but here are deep shared ties of history and culture yes there’s indefinite detention and the climate crisis, but here are people willing to lose their freedom, even their lives, to protest against them yes there’s loss and loneliness, but here are small moments of connection, of recognition, of dignity. She says: things are bad, life is complicated but here are Chaplin’s films and Pauline Boty’s paintings, here is Tacita Dean and Barbara Hepworth, here is Shakespeare and Dickens and Katherine Mansfield. Smith’s series has become a central part of my cultural life, one of the tools with which I attempt to read the moment, both a framing device and a lesson in defence against the dark arts.
With the Booker-shortlisted Autumn published in October 2016, Winter in November 2017, Springin March 2019, and now Summer, the four books are both independent novels and work together as a complex, interrelated collage of reflections on the way we live now. A vast and dizzyingly ambitious project – each book is written and published in just a few months – the novels seek to be as up to date as it is possible for literature to be. This is the final instalment of her seasonal quartet, a series that has already been celebrated by reviewers and readers alike. I ’m not sure I’ve ever looked forward to a book as eagerly as Ali Smith’s Summer.
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