Ali Smith is a very popular novelist amongst the bloggers, booktubers and podcasters that I follow that it seemed imperative to read one of her novels. Spring was the one the library had.
Here’s the blurb …
What unites Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Brexit, the present, the past, the north, the south, the east, the west, a man mourning lost times, a woman trapped in modern times?
Spring. The great connective.
With an eye to the migrancy of story over time, and riffing on Pericles, one of Shakespeare’s most resistant and rollicking works, Ali Smith tells the impossible tale of an impossible time. In a time of walls and lockdown, Smith opens the door.
The time we’re living in is changing nature. Will it change the nature of story? Hope springs eternal.
I liked it, but not as much as I expected given all of the rave reviews from others. Is it because I started with this one rather than Autumn? Possibly I am not literary enough.
Here is a much better review.
3 out of 5.