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.
'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
'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
'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
