Spring: 'A dazzling hymn to hope? Observer: 3 (Seasonal Quartet, 3)

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER

Discover Ali Smith''s dazzling, once-in-a-generation series, the Seasonal Quartet, a tour-de-force quartet of novels about love, time, art, politics, and how we live right now

All four instalments of the quartet are available to buy and read in paperback and ebook now: Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer

''Her best book yet, a dazzling hymn to hope, uniting the past and the present with a chorus of voices'' Observer

''An astonishing accomplishment and a book for all seasons'' Independent

''State-of-the-nation novels which understand that the nation is you, is me, is all of us'' New Statesman

''Smith tells stories in a voice you can''t help but listen to'' The Times

What unites Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Rilke, 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.

LONGLISTED FOR THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE 2019

Praise for the Seasonal Quartet:

''Transcendental writing about art, death, political lies, and all the dimensions of love. It''s a case not so much of reading between the lines as of being blinded by the light between the lines - in a good way'' Deborah Levy on Autumn

''The novel of the year is obviously Autumn, which managed the miracle of making at least a kind of sense out of post-Brexit Britain'' Olivia Laing, Observer on Autumn

''Ali Smith is flat-out brilliant, and she''s on fire these days... Combining brainy playfulness with depth, topicality with timelessness, and complexity with accessibility while delivering an impassioned defence of human decency and art'' NPR on Winter

''Rank[s] among the most original, consoling and inspiring of the artistic responses to ''this mad and bitter mess'' of the present'' Financial Times on Winter

''A novel of great ferocity, tenderness and generosity of spirit that you feel Dickens would have recognised... Smith is engaged in an extended process of mythologizing the present states of Britain... Luminously beautiful'' Observer on Winter