Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Winter

Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Winter by Ali Smith

5 reviews

withlivjones's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Beautifully written, haunting, melancholy, and filled with both (late 2010s) politics and art. It’s a complicated, non-chronological narrative and you have to accept that you’re not going to know what’s going on all the time (the floating head??? what was going on there?) but between that there are some outstanding moments that capture the complexity of familial relationships. The argument between Sophia and Iris at the dinner table was a real standout to me. I also love it when characters have oddly specific issues (like Art’s ex impersonating his nature blog on Twitter), it really helps to flesh them out and make them real. I can’t wait to read the rest of the series!

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deedireads's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

TL;DR REVIEW:

Winter is another quiet but profound installment of Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet. I’m once again awed by how she does so much with so little. Can’t wait for Spring!

For you if: You like a short book that begs you to take your time.

FULL REVIEW:

Winter had me hooked from the very first line, “God was dead: to begin with.” Many readers will recognize this as a spoof of the opening line of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (“Marley was dead: to begin with”), which is one of my favorite books of all time. What a way to set the stage for this quiet, focused story about perception and family and climate change and immigration and connection and the “post-truth” era.

At the center of the novel is a man named Art, who runs a (disingenuous) blog called Art in Nature. After his girlfriend, Charlotte, dumps him right before he was supposed to bring her home for Christmas, he meets a girl named Lux at a bus stop and pays her to come and play the role of Charlotte. They arrive to find Art’s mother — who is secretly hallucinating a floating baby head — in the dark with no food in the house. They call Art’s estranged aunt, a former nuclear protester, to come help.

I sort of wish I had read this book in December, but it was still a delight. There are so many layers here in such a short book, not least of which is the theme of visitations and spectres recalling A Christmas Carol again. I loved Lux: she’s near-homeless, an immigrant, arriving unexpectedly, gluing everyone together — more hints of Christmas. But it’s really not a Christmas book; it’s really about these characters and their interiorities and relationships amidst the broader context of England’s political landscape at the time (post-Brexit), all of which Ali Smith writes so well.

I know Winter doesn’t tend to be most people’s favorite of the Seasonal Quartet, but I might have liked it even more than Autumn — if only for its connection to my dear old Scrooge. Can’t wait to continue on to Spring!

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itsbumley's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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penofpossibilities's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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ejb44's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark funny reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Winter by Ali Smith is the second novel of her Seasonal Quarter, it follows Autumn, which I read in 2020. The book is set during the Christmas period, with the protagonist Sophia dipping in and out of her memories over her life. Her companions this Christmas; her sister Iris, son Art and Art’s paid-fake-girlfriend Charlotte, all contribute to this idea of an unreliable narrator that permeates this novel.

Going in, I wasn’t sure what to expect, as I’ve heard how Winter is some people’s favourite book from the collection, and also how many thought it lacked the nuance and poetry that came with Autumn. Sadly, I have to agree with the latter. The sheer attention to detail and feelings evoked with Autumn placed the book in my top five reads of 2020, but I felt this novel lacked unity, inspiration and clarity.

I found the first 25% of the book really well written as it essentially focused on only Sophia and her coping with her mental illness along with her Scrooge mentality which has become a looming child’s head in Sophia’s life. This hovering aspect of the novel, bigger even than the narrator idea, was really beautifully written and often left me uncomfortably looking up. However, as soon as this concept finished early on in the book, I thought the talent went along with it. The remaining 75% of the novel felt like a slow drag, perhaps even intentional, the same way family members feel dragged into argument and tensions during family occasions, like the book explores.

With the backdrop of a post-Brexit world and Trump as President, the theme of an unreliable narrator and protagonist worked really well, I thought. Living during this time period and in a post-modern world, it is easy to see how these lies and uncertainties that the reader and the character Art experiences affects our reading of the book.

The role of dissociation in this novel was also really striking, because through Sophia we have this rejection of the modern world, technology and the need to go back to the “good old days”, mainly referring to the rise in snowflake culture, over sensitivity and global issues becoming the problem of other countries, most notably the refugee and immigration topics. Compared to Art, who lives his life entirely online and works from home, he is unable to form a real human relationship and experiences the world through nature which he writes about on his blog. These two extremes of dissociation with the world and wanting to go back to basics accurately reflects the minds of many in this country today and indicates how in touch Smith is when it comes to interpreting and projecting the voice of modern people.

Overall, I still really liked the book, but I think it lacked something which Autumn had – clarity, poetry and elegance. Perhaps this was because it was the first book I read by her, so I was more blown away by the original style, or even perhaps because the mood is intentionally sombre because it represents the Winter season, but it doesn’t change the fact that I still felt slightly disappointed with this sequel.

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