Summer by Ali Smith
“And the gods on the balcony bowed politely back to the summer day, and the townspeople of the city of flowers saw the flowers slowly lifting their heads after the sudden frost, and they were glad to have the flowers back, even for the short time a flower lasts.”
With the final instalment of her Seasonal Quartet, Ali Smith brings us full circle into Summer (2020). Following from Autumn (2017), Winter (2018) and Spring (2019), Summer delivers to readers what we have come to crave – a juxtaposing, dream-like novel that speaks to our time. Through diverse, disconnected voices across Britain, the four books track the changing political landscape of a post-Brexit nation. Through Summer we see past the conclusion of Brexit and come to grapple with the division that remains between those who cry out for change and those who say - so?
Summer follows Sacha and Robert Greenlaw, a young sister and brother, as they grow up and consider what it means to be a family in what feels like end times. The siblings, with their mother Grace in tow, travel to meet the 104-year-old Daniel Gluck (from Autumn), and fatefully cross paths with Arthur and Charlotte (from Winter). To the reader who has followed the quartetfrom the beginning, seeing these characters reappear is like speaking with old friends. But, as always, Smith delivers a few new voices: there is a chapter dedicated to Grace’s memory of summers and people past, and another given to Hero, an inspiring asylum seeker staying hopeful in the face of strife.
Through each iteration of the quartet Smith has served up a prophetic or powerful child – a figure of the next generation that is come. Sacha and Robert differ from their predecessors, for rather than the children teaching the adults a lesson, it is the protagonists of Smith’s previous novels that teach the children. Gluck, though unravelling in old age, brings the perspective of the elderly to our changing times, comparing his own internment during WWII to those of modern-day asylum seekers. Arthur, though at times naïve, asks aesthetic questions that reveal the nature of the people around him.
But Charlotte is the heart of Summer. Though a rather two-dimensional figure in the background of Arthur’s story in Winter, Smith rekindles Charlotte’s voice as her mouthpiece to address the younger generation. As both Sacha and Robert begin to admire Charlotte, their two reactions to our crumbling world are made apparent: Sacha is resistant, embracing activism in response to a global crisis. Robert is disenchanted, instead embracing individualism in response to trauma. Smith speaks to these polarised perspectives with kindness, as Charlotte offers this advice to Sacha:
“There’s a lot of powerplay in liking and being liked. Such a powerful connection, it’s a chance to make the world bigger for someone else. Or smaller. That’s always the choice we’ve got.”
An ambitious experiment, Smith sought to write and publish novels that were as current as possible, whereby the shape and direction of the narrative was foremost directed by times. Referencing Australian wildfires, mysterious monoliths and a spreading virus, Summer reads like a year in review. That COVID-19 suddenly took over much of our lives is reflected in its sudden appearance in the final chapter of this series.
However, this may be to the novel’s detriment. Summer attempts to introduce three compelling new characters, do justice to the existing ones, include more references to art and history, all while capturing the fear and isolation brought on by a global pandemic. Is it possible to do all this while satisfyingly tying together three disconnected novels and meeting the precedent set by the series? As insightful a read as Summer is, the quantity of Smith’s characters and the width of her observations can often lead to a sacrifice of depth, particularly in comparison to the previous novels.
Yet how can you write a book that captures our moment in history without considering COVID-19? Smith, to her absolute credit, considers the pandemic as it affects the displaced people in immigration centres, building thematically on what she introduced in Spring. She wields COVID-19 to remark on family and disconnection (building on Winter) and on the repetition of history (building on Autumn). Together these ideas coalesce to capture the mood in the air, which is put best by Charlotte:
“You know how people keep saying about this time we’re in now, oh well, we are where we are. It’s more like we are where we aren’t.”
For all that Summer delivers, it does not feel like an ending. Smith has the unenviable task of concluding a series in which time is nonlinear. As the year rolls over, I cannot help but expect another Autumn to drop next October, bearing a comparison of the Capitol riots to King Lear, a child’s sobering consideration of the Beirut explosion and a wise musician’s evolution of British punk.
Though Brexit is over, I want to keep reading. I want to see who Robert Greenlaw grows to be. I’m not ready yet to leave behind Ali Smith’s vivid and funny voice. But Summer reminds me that an ending always bears with it a new beginning. For all that it is and isn’t, Summer comes and goes as a beautiful, bittersweet achievement.
Patrick Johns is a poet and editor based in the inner-west of Sydney. He is studying Philosophy and English at the University of Sydney.