Spring
Ratings8
Average rating4
15
Ratings8
Average rating4
From the Man Booker Prize Finalist comes the third novel in her Seasonal Quartet—a New York Times Notable Book and longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2020 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 tell 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.
Featured Series
2 primary booksSeasonal is a 2-book series with 2 primary works first released in 2017 with contributions by Ali Smith.
Reviews with the most likes.
Immediately after reading Summer, I went straight to my local bookshop and purchased Spring as it was the only one being available out of the Seasonal Quartet series.
Spring, a lovely season, full of life springing back from death, revival, hopeful, in midst of a drastic change, a transition between winter and summer, right in the middle... Perhaps it is that fervid yet depressing Summer that pumps my expectations too high to give Spring a five, or it is out of personal prejudice in which my favourite season remains Summer all along. This is a much hopeful novel in comparison to our status quo which Summer has summed it up in a very satisfying and hit-on way.
Having known that this novel will still revolve around some current issues (back in 2019), the portrayal of that influence Internet has on us-what's to be known of and what's not, climate change-how much the mother earth has endured of human's devastation in rapid urbanisation and development, Brexit, that old voting system and oh also the phenomenon that people just want to know your stance, but never it is about your opinions that matter to them. In spite of this, we have also caught a glimpse on the story of Richard and Paddy, a seemingly desolate one, yet is it death that stops us from getting to know and be with that person we have in mind? Is it really worrisome to live in your memories to savour the times you have spent with that particular someone so it would carry on eternally beyond death? Or is it death merely a transitional period as spring itself is, that it allows the entrance of us into another world which provides us a more promising and brighter future? How are we to know of all this? Yet, it is, to live through spring, to carry ourselves onward, to meet each other at the ends of these ongoing turmoils.
Spring, it is, spring forward and onward, until the light of summer shines on you, to drag yourself out of the abyss of winter.
Maybe I'm lazy but I had to work really hard to decrypt what was going on here
