April 15, 2019
The third installment of Smith's Seasonal Quartet (Autumn, 2017; Winter, 2018) touches on previous themes of creativity and friendship and delves deeper into current events with a sharp-edged look at the treatment of immigrants. In the spring of 2018, a TV director named Richard discusses a new film with a woman named Paddy, a brilliant, ailing scriptwriter with whom he started working in the 1970s. The project and their decadeslong relationship will punctuate the book's time-bending narrative, a large swath of which concerns a few days in the following October. Paddy has died, and Richard takes a train to Kingussie, Scotland, and considers suicide. Around the same time, Brittany, a guard at one of England's immigrant-detention centers, meets the quasi-magical 12-year-old Florence and agrees to entrain for Scotland as well. Joining the sparse cast in Kingussie (pronounced Kin-you-see, in a devilish pun) is Alda, the driver of a coffee van with no coffee. All is revealed in the spring of 2019. As in the first two books, Smith alludes to contemporary issues, such as #MeToo, Brexit, and fake news, but on immigrants she grabs a megaphone. The book's opening chapter is a verbal collage of rant and headline. Smith uses Brittany to spotlight grim details behind the cynicism and cruelty of Britain's immigrant-detention policy, while Alda and Florence suggest the roots of a solution. Roots, shoots, and buds abound amid myriad references to death and rebirth, from the Hanged Man pub to Orpheus, Norse mythology's Ragnarok, and Shelley's "The Cloud." The three novels have a few common elements--the pain and pleasure of creativity; the pairing of an older adult and an intelligent youth; the showcasing of an English female visual artist, here Tacita Dean--but they are self-contained and increasingly urgent in their hope that art might bring change. As Alda says, "Those stories are deeply serious, all about transformation." Smith's work is always challenging and always rewarding.
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June 10, 2019
Like its two predecessors in Smithâs acclaimed Seasonal Quartet (Autumn and Winter), this dynamic novel captures the many turmoils of life in the contemporary U.K. through ecstatic language and indirect narrative collisions. The first third, set mostly on a Scottish train platform, concerns Richard Lease, an over-the-hill TV and film director mourning his recently deceased collaborator, Paddy. Rife with nuanced reflections on the nature of art and mourning, Richardâs ruminative section is the bookâs most immediate and engaging. After Richard lowers himself into the path of an oncoming train, readers meet his would-be rescuer, Brit, a security guard at a migrant detention facility. Brit has been lured into an impromptu journey by Florence, a pseudo-messianic young girl seemingly capable of inspiring empathy in even the darkest of hearts. The three mismatched characters are soon traveling together, on their way to an old battlefield where the violences of yesteryear and the present day will converge. As was the case with Autumn and Winter, the novelâs setting is its foremost strength and increasingly enervating flaw, leading to writing that alternately astounds and exasperates. About three-quarters of the way through the third quarter of this series, the bookâs most memorable character, Richard, provides a relevant description of the whole enterprise, a response for every season: âGimmicky, but impressive all the same.â Agent: Andrew Wylie, the Wylie Agency.
October 1, 2018
Celebrated Scottish author Smith's "Seasonal Quartet" of linked but stand-alone novels exploring contemporary issues both personal and social began with the Man Booker short-listed, multi-best-booked Autumn, already in its ninth printing in trade paperback here. It continued with Winter, published here in 2018 and multi-best-booked in the UK, where it was published in 2017. What will spring bring? More of the best, though plot details aren't out yet.
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