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A review by sybr
Spring by Ali Smith
2.0
Too preachy and pretentious. I could feel the author wear the mask of every character she wanted to, only to express her social commentary, which related to very well known and criticised subjects. As a result, the authors' opinion on them was not that meaningful or powerful. Do you really need a 400 page book to realise systemic refugee abuse and sexism are existent and bad ?
On the other hand, the characters' interactions with each other was so realistic and brilliantly done, that they made up for the absence of plot at some points. The dialogs were witty and honest, had the quality of capturing the reader's attention. Another great aspect was the way she fused literary and visual artists' work with themes of the novel.
Smith's novel felt like a collage, at times annoyingly disjointed and too challenging to correlate its different themes. Being a collage, you admire parts of it and reject others, and this book is just that : parts of pure brilliance lost in the middle of a disjointed plot, that serves as a vessel for thinly disguised social commentary.
On the other hand, the characters' interactions with each other was so realistic and brilliantly done, that they made up for the absence of plot at some points. The dialogs were witty and honest, had the quality of capturing the reader's attention. Another great aspect was the way she fused literary and visual artists' work with themes of the novel.
Smith's novel felt like a collage, at times annoyingly disjointed and too challenging to correlate its different themes. Being a collage, you admire parts of it and reject others, and this book is just that : parts of pure brilliance lost in the middle of a disjointed plot, that serves as a vessel for thinly disguised social commentary.