Book #47: Summer by Ali Smith
Summer by Ali Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The final book in Ali Smith's Seasonal Quartet was published last summer, and manages to be very topical with a lot of references to the Coronavirus pandemic. I wondered if Ali Smith was making a lot of last-minute revisions to include mentions of PPE shortages, masks and panic-buying of toilet rolls, which were all quite big things during 2020.
I noticed that as well as the usual subject matter discussed in this book - refugees and Brexit - time seemed to be a recurring theme. One of the characters, Robert, seems to be fascinated by it, at one point supergluing an hourglass to his sister Sacha's hands, telling her it's "time on your hands". I noticed that the book also had a lot of flashbacks, and dream sequences, comparing the chaos 2020 with happier summers in the past. I found myself having to pay attention a lot so that I was able to tell when I was reading one of the flashbacks/dreams, particularly as the latter usually ended quite abruptly.
This book felt at first like it had more disparate stories than the previous installments; the first segment was about a family coping with the Coronavirus pandemic, and it seemed to revolve mainly around teenage brother and sister, Robert and Sacha. The family seemed to be discussing going on holiday somewhere in Britain (another thing people did a lot of in 2020 when nobody could travel abroad).
After part 1, the novel started re-introducing characters who appeared in the previous titles, including Daniel, Art and Charlotte, and dovetailing their stories into each other, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Overall, I really enjoyed this, and was glad that I kept reading all four books; although not a lot happened, I found myself wanting to spend time with the characters, and this book seemed to have more humour than the previous three, mostly through observations about the world in 2020. I would be interested to find out what other books Ali Smith has written, and try those as well.
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