Having captured the chaos and catharsis of the dying embers and slumbering promise of Autumn and Winter in 2017 and 2018, Ali Smith turns to new beginnings for the third novel in her peerless seasonal quartet.
Longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2020
From the bestselling author of Autumn and Winter, as well as the Baileys Prize-winning How to be Both, comes the next installment in the remarkable, once-in-a-generation masterpiece, the Seasonal Quartet
What unites Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Rilke, Beethoven, Brexit, the present, the past, the north, the south, the east, the west, a man mourning lost times, a woman trapped in modern times?
Spring. The great connective.
With an eye to the migrancy of story over time, and riffing on Pericles, one of Shakespeare's most resistant and rollicking works, Ali Smith tells the impossible tale of an impossible time. In a time of walls and lockdown Smith opens the door.
The time we're living in is changing nature. Will it change the nature of story? Hope springs eternal.
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780241973356
Number of pages: 352
Weight: 245 g
Dimensions: 197 x 129 x 20 mm
Luminous, generous, hope-filled... The third book in Ali Smith's seasonal quartet is her best yet, a dazzling hymn to hope, uniting the past and present with a chorus of voices... [Ali Smith] is lighting us a path out of the nightmarish now - Observer
Is there a writer so critically acclaimed and universally beloved? ...Autumn, Winter and Spring are stories of the unlikely connections human beings can make and the cost exacted when those connections are broken. They are state of the nation novels which understand that the nation is you, is me, is all of us: the nation is our choices, our fears, our losses... [Ali Smith] is the national novelist we need in 2019 - New Statesman
An astonishing accomplishment and a book for all seasons - Independent
Smith is a masterful storyteller... Spring is political but Smith is more concerned with the human fallout of current affairs then the machinations of elites... Through her account of unlikely friendships, Smith brings human values to the fore. Savour it, because there is just one instalment left - Evening Standard
Spring weaves a story around the most pressing issues of our time... [A] bubbling, babbling brook of a book...Smith tells stories in a voice you can't help but listen to - The Times
A powerful vision of lost souls in a divided Britain... As Smith's Seasonal Quartet moves towards completion her own role in British fiction looks ever more vital. The final page proclaims spring 'the great connective'. It's not a bad description of Smith herself - Guardian
Beguiling... The eagerly awaited third instalment - Financial Times
Infectious in its energy and warmth - Daily Telegraph
Just when things were starting to look really bad, along comes the third instalment in Ali Smith's seasonal quartet to lift us out of the gloom... An extraordinary embodiment of the ways in which storytelling connects us... The work of Katherine Mansfield and Rilke, Greek myths and the propulsive lyricism of spring itself, thread together in narratives of loss and rejuvenation - Daily Mail
The third of her exceptional Seasonal quartet, which riffs back and forth with Autumn and Winter to expound on the importance of hope to move us beyond the darkest of times - I paper
The most compelling and coherent of the three books... Smith, as always is interested in how a story gets told, and who gets to tell it - Sunday Times
Ali Smith is one of our greatest living novelists, the Virginia Woolf of our times. - The Observer
The reviews are glowing but none of them mention the plots. Now I know why. There isn’t one. literary luvvie navel gazing. Another thing have you noticed how big the print is in these editions. Suspicions that this... More
I have been in a bit of an Ali Smith phase recently and have been looking forward to Spring coming out. I loved Spring, I loved the characters, the way they interacted with one another and Ali Smith's writing... More
Another near masterpiece from Ali Smith's seasonal quartet - in some ways I think this one is the best yet. Once again, she weaves a number of strands in a way which can seem almost random, but the further you... More
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