Some years ago, while abroad, I came across a copy of Ali Smith’s How To Be Both. I was intrigued both by its cover and premise. Obviously I bought it and a few weeks later started it. I admit that I couldn’t get a hang of it. Time was reminding me: it is not the right moment. Recently I have discovered that I was not alone in this feeling.

Fast forward to 2018. I buy both Autumn and Winter, the first two instalments in Smith’s Seasonal Quartet (Spring was published recently while Summer is yet TBA). Autumn was simply brilliant. Winter is even better. For a multitude of reasons. Second time round, you start to grasp more and more the world Ali Smith had in mind. A bleak world yet where there is still hope even though Winter is the season of Death.

It is a political and almost-Shakesperean novel in tone and setting centred around an
idiosyncratic family full of strife between its family members (metaphorical much of the division inside UK right now, post-Brexit?) where sisters Iris and Sophia do not talk, where Art (the son) has a strenuous relationship with both his mother and his girlfriend and the appearance of a stranger (Lux) turns their lives upside down. There is love lost, love regained, hope and hopelessness.

As usual the Scottish writer deals with a lot of different themes and subjects across the novel: from Brexit (again) to Trump (powerful ending, by the way) to nuclear armaments, to refugees, to the Grenfell Tower disaster, to the usage of social media and even the Russian experiment with Laika, the dog. The list is endless. As usual the novel is filled with puns and sparse of speech marks and drifts naturally between different timelines (this time round much more than its predecessor).

Again this second instalment features trees in its cover; again it features a painting, of the artist mentioned in the novel, at the back (Pauline Boty in Autumn, Barbara Hepworth in Winter). Again I probably missed other clues along the process.

Then there is its opening. Beautiful and hammers inside your mind for days afterwards.

I can’t wait to lay my hands on Spring.