Smith, Ali. <Summer>

Seasons revolve, and autumn has finally arrived. I finished reading Summer, the last book of The Seasonal Quartet by Ali Smith, about a week ago. Then the sun still held its chin high, sending its scorching glare upon every poor creature on the earth. I now guess, perhaps the reading experience inadvertently marked an end to the “implausible” season. With some scepticism, it has also imparted a sense of courage and moral responsbility to me, eventually emancipating myself from a month-old goad and guiding me to the right path. That might even sound like a bible or any sacred texts. Yet, indeed, not only Summer but all four novels certainly qualify as the modern classics. If a future reader seeks for a literary source to feel what it was like to live in the post-Brexit Britain and through the quarantined years of pandemic, Smith’s masterpiece would be the most befitting choice. Smith does not put those social, environmental changes in the foreground. Instead, she acutely delineates the multi-faceted mind of us, which has only grown more complicated with the ever-expanding gap between the technological progress and moral establishment, by capitalising on those events. The separation, hatred, bigotry, and isolation might seem unprecedented at first. However, the human race has already experienced them not even long time ago. The unlawful treatment of the Gluck family reverberates into the current era as a myriad of immigrants are detained behind the windowless plastic walls. In the time of uncertainty and anxiety, people tend to forge an enemy within their reach so that they can transmit every kind of negativity to the innocent. We sometimes believe that we are different from them, that I am disconnected from you, by all means. However, sometimes we who initially thought are total stranger turn out to be related. Smith skillfully amalgamates the separate stories of each season into a single, century-old narrative. Thus, strangers become families and friends quite unexpectedly. I especailly found myself gasping with delight every time a line was drawn between the dots. Then, things that once defined us - age, sex, origin, vocation, and even political orientation - are incapacitated into tolerable discrepancies of the beloved. When you realise you are not a solitary entity independent of the human lineage, you cross a threshold once again into the world of comradery. As Grace intuitively understands, A Winter’s Tale is actually about summer.

 

Smith, Ali. Summer. Penguin Books, 2021.