Spring

A soft four stars. I think I don't love Spring as much as I love the two previous novels in Smith's quartet, Autumn and Winter but nevertheless the author's passionate, witty, deeply angry intellect is on grand display here.

I wonder how these books will read in 30 years, when I think we as humans will look back on this time with a great deal of despair and regret. Regardless, these books are a time capsule of an upset Western world, drawing together art and politics, history and the present, naturalism and mythology, into a compelling literary strand.

Didn’t understand it all, but I liked the way she told the story and the way she provoked feelings about the inhumane treatment of immigrants and refugees. Probably too modern for a poorly educated old geezer but I definitely got something from it.

“April.It teaches us everything.The coldest and nastiest days of the year can happen in April. It won’t matter. It’s April.”“Even the machine has to encounter nature, not even it can escape the earth. There's something reassuring in that.” "The light starts to push back, stark in the cold. But birdsong rounds the day, the first and last thing as the light comes and goes." The third in Smith’s seasonal quartet is a tough one to describe. It is more immersive and introspective, than plot driven. Four different people get thrown together, while traveling through Scotland. An aged film director, a security guard, a librarian and a mysterious twelve-year-old girl. How their lives change on this chance meet-up, is the thrust of the story. There are plenty of ruminations on Shakespeare, poetry, climate change and Brexit. Not always an easy read but her lovely writing and pure ambition make it worthy of your time.

There are so many excellent reviews already posted that I can't possibly add much insight. I loved this book....but at first, I didn't. We start with the story of Richard, an aging film maker who was more famous decades ago. He has recently lost his best friend and co-worker, finds himself alone with only an uninspiring project offered to him. There is a sudden jolt in the novel, and we move to the story of Brit, an officer in charge of immigrants awaiting deportation and a young schoolgirl named Florence. I wondered if these stories would come together because they were so different. As I became more engrossed in this story, I started liking the book again. And they do come together in a wonderful way. The book contains the message of the importance of hope in spite of every evidence to the contrary.

Another season, same great feeling. Ali Smith continues to create a wonderful mindset of feelings. I’ve become seriously addicted to these books. When I started Spring, I was feeling that I liked Winter the best, and then I kept reading, and I wasn’t as sure. All three of the seasons/books are clever and find a daring and fresh use of language. They are all uniquely strange in that they don’t use much of any narrative or have a firm plotline running through them, Smith does her thing and leaves impressions. The books have different characters that reappear within them, but there aren’t many active scenes. And then there’s the visual appearance that uses several styles in different sections, many with a variety of font sizes and layouts. Often there were many short lines, almost like a form of poetry, but they were always evolving. She also creates a text that is very rich in puns. Smith keeps the reader on their toes, as one is never sure if you’re reading a dream, are being invited into a hallucination, and where the book will pull together, or if it even needs to. A reviewer said that Spring made them think of something in a raw state like a Twitter rant.One of the book’s major characters is named Florence, who we “know” to be in her early teens, but most everything else about her isn’t nailed down, isn’t firm, anything else about her could just be some vague rumors of fact. How does Smith make this vagueness work so well? I’m not even going to attempt an explanation here. The two main discernable stories in the book do eventually bring Florence together with the more defined characters of Brit (who works at an Immigration Removal center outside of London), and Richard (a television director who was much more relevant back in the 1970s), in a Scottish town and it somehow miraculously works. Ali Smith could be an outstanding poker player, as she’s very good at holding her cards close to her chest, while keeping an excellent poker face that reveals nothing beyond what makes her writing able to amaze the reader. Because I waited several years until I had all four volumes of the quartet in hand, I have chosen to read them in order, but I’m still pondering exactly how a different order would change the overall experience. Again, I don’t have an answer. That old standby line about not overthinking something, and to simply let art wash over you … comes to mind. The political and social landscape of Great Britain was making some serious twists and turns as she wrote some of these books during the evolution of Brexit. The anger and discord of the different factions seems to bring more of an edge to this season.This is a vague review, but these books are not written in black and white with clear boundaries, they work for me because I’m trying mightily to keep my anal-retentive, detail-craving mind in the background. Anyone reading this piece knew this line of thought would show up before I was done here: these books will either work for you or you’ll be on the outside wondering what exactly you just read. Through the first three books, I’ve been in the room thoroughly loving these seasons.

Each of the books in Smith's Seasonal Quartet focus on a few major subjects/social justice issues/moral imperatives. Spring explores the detainment of refugees and migrants as well as the dehumanization of the people who we place in these centers (as well as the general disregard and/or derision that our society has for people labeled 'other' or 'foreign') . She looks at this topic through a few different lenses so that the reader can get a full view of the situation. We see the inside of a detainment facility in the UK through the eyes of a Detainment Officer named Brittany who has lost all compassion for the people under her 'care'. [A/N: The care aspect is dubious at best if the person doing the caring sees the people as inconveniences instead of humans which is pretty much the main point that Smith is making.] When Brittany meets a young girl at the train station who seems to have an almost hypnotic effect on everyone that she meets (including Brittany) the story takes a turn because Brittany (as well as the reader) is confronted with serious questions about otherness, belonging, and moral responsibility on a macro scale.The same time that this storyline is unfolding there is a parallel storyline following a director named Richard who has lost someone very close to him and has decided that life has lost all meaning as a result. His story is told very descriptively through literature and film references and without any visuals still manages to evoke clear pictures in the mind of the reader. (If you couldn't tell I really loved it.) Rainer Maria Rilke and Katherine Mansfield's stories are told alongside his as he wrestles with adapting a book about them into a film. I feel that Smith's writing is valuable and poignant as well as incredibly relevant (purposely so which is why I somewhat regret not reading these as they came out). I'm very much looking forward to the last in the series but I'm also sad to be finishing the journey. Spring is a definite 10/10.[A/N: As a slight spoiler, there are mentions of suicidal ideation so be aware if that might be triggering to you.]

The third in Ali Smith's Seasonal Quartet, and another good, engaging read. I really enjoy Smith's wonderfully complex narratives.

Richard is an aging filmmaker who’s just lost his best friend, screenwriter Paddy. Brittany is a security guard at an Immigration Removal Centre. Florence is a child with a mysterious ability to get people to do things they don’t want to do. Their lives will unexpectedly collide in Kingussie, Scotland.The arts are as prominent in this book as in the first book in Smith’s Seasonal Quartet. This time it’s Katherine Mansfield, Rainer Maria Rilke, Charlie Chaplin, Beethoven, and visual artist Tacita Dean. There is grief, depression, and fear, but also the hope signified by spring.The writing is what I’ve come to expect from Smith, yet it feels a bit derivative. Richard’s conversations with an imaginary daughter is a device Atwood uses to good effect in Hag-Seed. And the whole book has the feel of a Jackson Brodie novel, but without Jackson Brodie.

Richard Lease, a documentary filmmaker is reeling from the death of his longtime collaborator and occasional lover Paddy. He is also struggling to develop for screen a novel imagining an interval of time during which Katherine Mansfield and Rainer Maria Rilke lived in the same small mountain town—did they ever meet? What would they have said to each other? Midway through the book, his life converges with Brit, an aimless guard in an immigrant detention facility and 12 year old Florence, who has a way of speaking truth to power and getting results. As in the other volumes of the quartet, there is little plot, and the narration is nonlinear. But there is a lot going on about contemporary life in Britain, and in this volume much of the focus is on the detention of immigrants and refugees. There’s also a lot of discussion of art, and I once again learned about a contemporary British artist I’d not known of before, Tacita Dean.That completes my reading of the quartet, out of order, unfortunately. I’m putting all four volumes on my “To Be Reread” list, if I happen to live long enough, to be reread in order. It would be well-worth it.4 1/2 stars

This is a book of our time for our time. Ali Smith captures the noise and inhumanity of social media, the threads of stories that we are living, the refugee crisis and detainment that strips away humanity, the ignorance and willful blindness to humanity that some willingly embark upon. This book is beautiful and bleak at once, full of hope and despair intertwined. I have greatly appreciated the slow burn of this book and cannot wait to read Summer next year. Once I do, I plan to re-read all of the books in immediate sequence to see what connections can be made in the cycle.

Spring is the third in Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet, a series of loosely connected novels set in contemporary Britain. Richard Lease, a filmmaker, is mourning the loss of his colleague and dear friend, Paddy. He bailed out of his latest project, caught a train to northern Scotland, and began considering his next steps, quite literally. After spending about one third of the book inside Richard’s head, learning about his career and his friendship with Paddy, Smith suddenly jumps to an Immigration Removal Center where a young woman named Brit works as a security guard, and a mysterious girl recently found her way into the center to advocate for the immigrants’ rights. This sounds disjointed, and the non-linear narrative of each story makes it even more so, and yet it works. The story occasionally jumps forward a few months, and then back again. The threads all come together into a narrative that leads each character to new places, literally and figuratively. I admit I wasn’t always sure just what Ali Smith was trying to say, but I found piecing this puzzle together oddly satisfying. I can’t wait to read the last book in the quartet.

My least favourite of the season cycle so far. It’s funny really, as the meat of the story - examining detention centres - arguably gets closer to examining modern Britain than the “blah Brexit blah“ of its predecessors.

Just as the years moves on so does Ali Smith with the third volume of her seasonal quartet. Now, its spring time, the time of the year between death and re-birth, between the end and a new beginning. A promising time, but also a time which can surprise and is hard to foresee. This time, we meet Richard, an elderly filmmaker who is still shaken by his former colleague and friend Patricia Heal’s death. He remembers his last visits when she was already between here and there. Richard is standing on a train platform with clearly suicidal intentions when a girl and a custody officer rush by. Florence and Brittany are headed for a place which they assume somewhere in Scotland, on their journey this unusual couple also addresses the big questions of life and humanity which Brittany can hardly find in the prison she works where the detainees are dehumanised and not even granted the least bit of privacy. Just like the two novels before in this quartet, Ali Smith captures the mood of the country at a very critical point. In my opinion, “Spring” is absolutely outstanding since it has several layers of narrative, it is philosophical, literary, sociological, psychological, political – an eclectic mix of thoughts and notions that come together or rather have to be put together by the reader. While, on the one hand, being were close to an archaic understanding of the concept of time and the natural course of a year, there are many references to artists and the imaginary world.Underlying the whole novel is a certain despair - Richard’s grieve, Britt’s disillusion with her job, Florence’s detachedness from humans which makes her almost invisible – in a time of political shaky times: Brexit, migration crisis, an overall suspicion in society about what (social) media and politics tell them and more importantly what they do not tell. Will there come a summer? And if so, what will it be like? As spring always is a new beginning, something might be overcome or left behind and something has the chance to flourish, at least the hope remains. I found it a bit harder this time to find my way in the novel, therefore, “Autumn” remains my favourite so far and I am quite impatient to see, what “Summer” will bring.

There is something about an Ali Smith novel that just fizzes, a kind of effervescence, as characters spark, linguistically, off of each other, alive to the possibilities of language however serendipitous. And that makes a novel like this one a joy to read even if, from another perspective, it’s a bit gangly and disjointed.Richard is a filmmaker. Or he used to be. He’s old now, though not ancient. He’s been roped in to direct what is turning out to be a dog’s breakfast of a film about an erotic meeting between a famous poet and a famous writer of short fiction from the early part of 20th century that actually never happened. History, as they say, is now just history. Whereas in story, you can do whatever the hell you want (or whatever the upper brass the BBC want). Richard’s storyline is intersected by another. Brittany is a security guard in a detention centre for refugees. She is increasingly hardened by her working environment of non-caring. But a chance (is it chance?) encounter with an almost legendary 12 year old girl leads to an extended trek up to Scotland and the aforementioned encounter with Richard. Thematically charged events ensue.Smith is, I think, burdened by a supercharged creative imagination. Everything is an opportunity either for a meaningful pun or an oblique segue into a different track of thought. Especially when there is an astoundingly precocious pre-teen involved. It’s exhausting. Fun, but exhausting. And sometimes there are, possibly, more useful things that might be done with plot and character. Though Smith is no slouch at those either. I sometimes wonder what a novel of hers might be like if she spent significantly longer on it. But it’s entirely possible that her virtues are her virtues and they might be lost by other means. So we take what we get and enjoy what we can. Besides, they’ll be another novel along next season in any case. I hope.Gently recommended.

This novel is something of a departure from Ali Smith's previous work as there is a plot, but in many other ways it is exactly what I have come to expect from her. The novel is fast-paced, emotionally moving, and works to expand your thinking in new ways, as in when she suggests that boundaries could be viewed as uniting two countries, rather than dividing them. Perhaps an even better example is setting the capture of refugees running from the authorities on the battlefield of Culloden. As usual, there is much here that I don't quite understand. I have a glimmer of understanding as to why Paddy is in the novel, but I am not really all that certain. Although she is dying, she is meant to represent renewal, or at least a different take on death. She is here for the same reason Katherine Mansfield and Rilke are in the book, but that reason eludes me: art that always strives for a new beginning? It just doesn't seem to fit all that well.

I started reading this book a few weeks ago. After reading the first chapter--a full-on rant in the voice of a member of the so-called "populist" right--I put it aside. I mean, I have to hear about Trump's tweets and rallies and rants and actively avoid his supporters' facebook posts every day, so did I want to read more of the same? Nope. So I put it aside. Fortunately, I liked Autumn and Winter enough that I went back to it. And fortunately, that is the only full-on rant. Maybe Smith had to get it out of her system before she got to her characters. Or maybe she wanted to make sure that she had set the stage for her novel. If you pick up this book, just keep reading. I promise, it's not all misery and hate.Richard Lease is a director best known for his 1970's TV plays. Now in his 60s, he's mourning the death of his writing partner and trying to work on a film adaptation of 'April,' a popular novel spun off the fact that the writers Katherine Mansfield and Rainier Maria Rilke stayed in a Swiss resort town at the same time but never met. It's a premise that he initially detested, but his partner, Paddy, convinced him that it could be wonderful, and after reading some of each writer's work and doing research on their lives, he is seeing new possibilities. The problem is that the director has other ideas--in short, a romance with (of course) hot sex scenes in every conceivable (and inconceivable) location. After several conversations with his imaginary daughter (who at Paddy's suggestion replaced the real one he hasn't seen in 27 years), he decides to end it all by laying on the underground tracks.Brit is a young DCO in an IRC for the HO--in other words, she works in a detention center for newly arrived immigrants. She's torn by empathy for some of the detainees, considering the filthy, crowded conditions in which they are living and the fact that most have stayed far longer than the law dictates, and by the necessity of developing a hard shell to survive in her job. The DCOs have been exchanging stories about a girl who somehow got past security and into the director's office, where she convinced him to bring in professionals to steam clean the toilets. And it is rumored that the girl went into a brothel and freed all of the trafficked sex workers. On her way to work one day, Brit sees a young girl heading towards the underground and is convinced that this is the magical child of the stories. Coincidence upon coincidence brings them to the platform where young Florence notices Richard on the tracks.And so begins an unlikely adventure and an unlikely partnership. Florence is, on one hand, an extremely precocious child, but on the other, as she says, "I'm just a twelve-year old girl." She is fascinated by an old post card depicting a lake in Scotland and convinces first Brit and then Richard to join her. Once they arrive as far as they can go by train, they persuade Alda, an immigrant food truck owner, to drive them the rest of the way. In her food truck.Spring is marked by all of the characteristics of an [[Ali Smith]] novel: a literary and artistic intelligence (Mansfield, Rilke, Shelley, Shakespeare, Charlie Chaplin, Nina Simone, and a little known photographer, Tacita Dean), politics (Brexit, racism, anti-immigration, global warming, the 24-hour news cycle, social media, etc.), plenty of humor, and brilliant writing. It's structure loosely re-imagines Shakespeare's [Pericles], one of the late romances in which a young girl brings redemption to the older generation--Smith's stab at bringing hope into today's challenging and often ugly world. It's a wonderful story, not one that whisks away all the world's problems in the end but that at least presents the possibility of optimism.Each novel in this planned quartet has been better than the last. I can't wait to see what Summer will bring.

Spring follows a similar sort of recipe to the previous two in the seasonal quartet: a not-quite-resolved story involving characters who refuse to fit well into current society and who sometimes seem to have a touch of the allegorical about them; extended references to some of Smith's artistic heroes (Katherine Mansfield, Rilke, Tacita Dean and Charlie Chaplin); and gloriously ranting Dickensian prose-poems telling us about some of the many things that are wrong with society. Having played around with the openings of A tale of two cities and A Christmas carol in the previous parts, this one riffs on the opening of Hard Times, which of course leads us into one of the big themes of the book: the increased obligation artists have to tell the truth in a society that seems to have given up valuing facts over lies. That side of the story is represented in particular by Richard, a TV director who made radical, hard-hitting dramas back in the seventies with his mentor and writing partner Patricia, but is finding it hard to see a way forward since her death. The other big topic is the vast and all-but-invisible Gulag created in the service of Mrs May's Hostile Environment for (those suspected of being) foreigners, which is represented by Brittany, who works as a guard for a private security company at one of their Immigration Detention Centres, and seems to be losing the ability to live a normal life as a result. All this is stirred up and shuffled around by one of Smith's always-wonderful mischievous agents of change, a young girl called Florence who sometimes seems to be a normal high-school student, and at other times turns into a kind of personification of spring. As usual, we're left in a little bit of doubt about where precisely all the bits have landed, and there seem to be two or three competing endings out there, including one in which Kingussie is a station on the Underground Railroad, but - as with the others in the series - it's not the narrative that drives this story, but the reader's engagement with Smith's argument about the dangers of sitting back and not doing our little bit to help fix things (however quixotic) when we see something wrong happening in the world around us.It would be worth getting just for the Hockney cover-art, but there's a lot more to enjoy when you get past that, even if this is one of Smith's darker works.