Oh my goodness I love this book. Yes, it deals with some very difficult subjects, from the days of Nazi Germany to the current difficult times with Coronavirus. It’s the fourth in Smith’s Seasons Quartet so it’s also gathering up a few of the folks from the prior three books. The themes are the same, art, politics, time, nature, interconnections and more.

*******
Summer
by Ali Smith
2020 / 393 pages
read by Juliette Burton 9h 27m
rating – 10 / literary fiction 
*******

But along with the grief comes laughter and Ali’s lovely word games.

Where the book Autumn, the first in the series, dealt with Brexit, Summer mentions Trump a few times but sticks pretty much to the English side of the troubles. Autumn was in large part the story of Daniel, a very old man in a nursing home in Norfolk who has qutie a story to tell here in Summer as well And we have Art and Charlotte who were featured in Winter continuing their story as well. But the main characters here are Robert, a precocious 13-year old, his cheeky 17-year old sister Sasha and their mother, Grace.

It all gets tangled up with movies and technology and a memento from the past.

That’s enough – It might be best to start with Autumn and read them in order from there but I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary.