Winter: A Novel (Seasonal Quartet) Paperback – November 6, 2018

So excited to finally own this series! It came in perfect condition :)

A complicated, super interesting book, telling lots of little stories. The stories move around in time, though mostly set over the Christmas holiday of 2016. There are four main, charming / difficult characters... two sisters who haven’t talked in many years, one son and his pretend girlfriend. The book is all their stories and how they come together, how they fall apart, and how they connect. The stories are about time, madness, aging, politics, family, love, art, lies, and maybe finding your true self.At one point Ali Smith has one character say, “I think you could maybe talk about anything [...]. There’s nothing you wouldn’t make interesting. Even I’m interesting when you talk about me,” which pretty much nails exactly how I feel about the whole book.

I preferred this author's Spring to Winter. I read them out of order, Spring before Winter. That made no difference. (have not read Autumn). Spring has more cohesion and better-developed characters. One of these books is enough for me, because her authorial tricks wear thin. Winter provokes debate and discussion in a book group, but most of my friends found the jumping from scene to scene and the unappealing characters irritating. The relentless PC politics were tiresome in Winter, whereas in Spring they were better integrated into the plot.

Ali Smith has a way of drawing you into her world. I always find myself lost in her novels and, when I've finished them, at a loss as to how to summarize them. This review was stretching out way too long, so I'm starting again, paring away the details that you need to discover for yourself.'Winter' is both a family drama and a commentary on the changing climate--both the physical climate and the sociopolitical one. The family: three estranged people and a lovable impostor. The commentary: our world and what it is doing to humanity. One of Smith's targets is technology and the way it removes us from real relationships, responsibility, and personal authenticity. The egotism and isolation it creates feeds into the populist movements that brought us Brexit and Donald Trump, both of which come under Smith's verbal attack. There's a moment when Art, one of the main characters, reads about a crowdfunding effort to raise money to buy a boat that will repel Italian boats trying to rescue refugees. It's hard not to see in that the support in some American quarters for building a wall on the Mexican border and deporting Dreamers to "home countries" that have never in memory been their homes. And it's no surprise that one main character, Arthur, writes a successful blog, Art in Nature--even though he is never out in nature and is rarely artful; it's all just BS for attention and self-gratification.The family story: It's almost Christmas, and Art and his fiancée Charlotte committed to spend the holiday with his mother, Sophie, in Cornwall. But there's a problem: Charlotte, an environmental activist, has called out Art for his lack of any real commitment to pro-nature causes. (There's symbolism in the fact that she destroys his laptop on her way out.) But does Art call Sophie and explain the breakup? Of course not. Instead, he hires a young Croatian girl who looks like she could use some cash to pretend to be Charlotte. Lux turns out to be the quiet hero of the novel.Sophie and Art don't get along. Sophie, a once-successful businesswoman, doesn't get along with her aging hippie sister, Iris, who is always off somewhere saving the world. And lately, Sophie has been seeing things . . . namely, the floating head of a young child. It's Lux who tells Art that he must call Iris and tell her to come at once, despite the sisters' animosity.Enough said about the plot. The novel moves back and forth among the family members and back and forth in time through their memories, yet it always comes back to the present day, asking, How did we get to this place? Full of Smith's usual wordplay, 'Winter' gives us bittersweet of the art that once was and the nature that we're losing, yet somehow we're left not so much with a sense of doom as a ray of hope. I can't describe it any better than that without giving away far too much and making it sound like something it isn't. Read it. Find out for yourself. When you're done, you'll want to read it again.

I'm becoming so enamoured with Ali Smith's style. This book is so cleverly witty, steeped in UK and global context, and depicts the roles and trends of modern communication technology. All done in a thought provoking way. The characters are vivid and enthralling. Now the long wait for Spring.

Such beautiful writing that enfolds the depth, breadth and heft of experience. It's hard to write about this stunning book because my words feel impoverished in comparison to the writing of Ali Smith. So much to love - deep and insightful charaterisations, effortless bridging of different times in a flow and sweep of prose, important questions, perspicacious observations, sympathy for flawed and difficult individuals. There's a gentle and tender view underlying it all that is nonetheless fierce and compelling. I felt completely drawn into this universe and am sad that the book is finished. Looking forward to the next season in the set.

Even though at the beginning I felt it rather confusing, it got me little by little. The language is very rich, the vocabulary choice and the expressions. The characters are very well depicted and their predicaments so real!! The topics are varied and interesting, and the criticism she makes of the reaction to the world's problems is strong and moving.

This book could have had more life in it; more emotionality would have brought these characters to life. Instead I found I could barely distinguish between Charlotte, Sophie or Lux. They were all flat and their laconic speech was unengaging and seemed to me to be inconsequential. The male character, Art, who is related to two of them, appeared to be as ground down as the three women.I was very disappointed. The book received high praise from literary reviewers but not from me.

No inicio há uma "aparição" que me fez muito lembrar o conto "Angelita Unearthed" do livro "The Dangers of Smoking in Bed" de Mariana Enríquez mas, infelizmente, as semelhanças rapidamente se dissiparam.Demorei um bocadinho a entrosar com o livro, só mesmo a um terço de fim é que senti que tudo se compunha.Gostei muito da linguagem, do jogo de palavras, da narrativa não linear mas não senti que o livro me transmitisse muito, não senti grande ligação com as personagens, não me convenceram as mágoas nem o discurso ativista.

A high quality literary novel using a fragmented narrative. There are also magical realist elements used to good effect. The prose at times reaches toward poetry. Overall, this is an excellent and innovative novel that works best if you dare to engage with it. Not an easy read, as some of the negative reviews show.

Guts to touch the political issue

This book is about art, nature, beauty, the absurd world we’re living in, and memories of some past attempts to change the world

It is said that this was adapted from Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol".However, I believe there are much qualitative difference between Dicken'sand "Winter", that is, Scrooge vs Marley and Sophia vs Iris.This novel reminds me of both Kazuo Ishiguro's "unreliable narrator's method" and Proustian way of making a story.This also has a fast tempo and is made from concise short sentences. That's very good.I had to contemplate how I could find a solution for this world's "multi-cultural" stateas well as the "divided" world today.I like it.