Winter

The second in the seasonal quartet, Ali Smith’s Winter took me longer than I anticipated to get into. I loved Autumn and the childlike narrative and the innocence of it, but Winter (just like the season) took a bit more work to get through.

The recurring thread that kept me going in this novel full of icy relationships was the small moments of connection between the character. Iris and Sophia, the sisters were almost a parallel to Art and Lux – opposites trying to figure each other out in strange circumstances. Each character has their slow thawing to do throughout the book, as they deal with past traumas and present hallucinations.

There were times when I felt it was too obviously a criticism of Brexit and the political climate (of course I love to whine about these topics too), perhaps I was reading this a little too late in the game. In particular, I found Iris’ flashbacks to the nuclear protests the most difficult to connect to. Again, maybe this was too long ago for me to know what Smith was referring to or it felt too strong a comparison to the Extension Rebellion equivalent of today. 

The politics worked best when entangled with Lux, who is paid to be a fake girlfriend but unlike cliché romcom fashion, she disappears. The instability of life for Lux becomes apparent as she gets let go from her job and turned out from the safest of public spaces, the library. In fact, Lux as an entire character is one of the few that you openly root for. She acts as a wise magical figure with the modern-day grit of a feminist heroine. Her intelligence and profound openness is what Art and Sophia struggle so deeply with, she accepts the strange family as they are. It’s of course obvious that she is more in touch with the world and the beauty in it than the ever-trying fraud, Art. 

One of my favourite moments was when Iris and Sophia argue over who told Art the old tale he remembers from his childhood. Art rings true of any Shakespearean protagonist – unknown parentage, tragic lack of self-identity, constantly caught in the middle of a family he doesn’t understand. Sophia’s stubbornness is so strong that it creates almost a comic relief – although it scarily echoes the constant denial of middle class leave voters. Iris on the other hand is almost so passionate that she can’t control herself, she is beyond Sophia’s understanding of the world and refuses to compromise. I read this as a battle of Remainers and Leavers or both sides of the politic spectrum, they never fully reconcile but they do continue to run alongside each other. 

Smith’s has a beautiful way of weaving a sense of mysticism and magic into her novels. With Autumn, it felt enhancing and subtle; in Winter, it is rigid, stubborn, an ever-changing floating head. The pureness of human emotion always makes itself known though and in Winter this manifests as grief, miscommunication but mostly – 

Mood: Intense, political and emotional days

Read again: Yes, but only after I’ve completed the quartet!

Photo credit: Orcaborealis / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)