The Strangest Excellent Novel I've Ever Read

Ali Smith's Spring leaning on an acoustic guitar

Ali Smith has been on my radar for quite some time now, as I’ve been hearing only positive things about her writing. I bought Spring from her Seasonal Quartet some time ago, and I was really looking forward to reading it. At the same time, I expected it to be a complex read, so I waited for the Christmas holidays to be fully focused.

Nothing I expected prepared me for the surprising ride I had with this novel. I loved it, it made me angry to the point I wanted to DNF it, and then I loved it again. Now I think it is the strangest excellent novel I’ve read.

If I’d wanted to compare Smith with someone, I’d say there are some similarities with Virginia Woolf’s writing in that she partly creates a stream of consciousness. Also, same as Woolf, Ali Smith writes pure politics through the perspectives of common people. Both provoke the same love–hate effect for me, and both have those brilliant sentences that stay with you forever and make you feel chills in your bones. Like this one:

“Sometimes I’m invisible, the girl says… People can look right through me. Certain white people can look right through young people and also black and mixed-race people like we aren’t here.”

But Ali Smith goes further than Woolf in the sense that the narrative is constantly meandering. She shifts between realism and magical realism to the point that in some parts you don’t know what is real and what is not.

So What’s Spring About?

I’ve given a lot of thought to this question because I want to recommend this novel to my friends and anyone who may read this review, and I can’t find an easy answer. This is neither a plot- nor character-driven novel. More interestingly, we can say that this novel doesn’t have a plot, or at least not in a standard way.

You can’t sit in a bar telling your friends, “this happens and then that and so on” — Spring doesn’t work that way. Instead, the narrative moves between different perspectives and ideas. It shifts from realism to magical realism while focusing on language, concepts, and the world around us.

We follow events surrounding three characters: Richard, a disillusioned filmmaker grieving the loss of his love; Florence, a mysterious girl; and Brit, a detention centre officer whose perspective personifies immigration policies. But Spring transcends these three stories, as it’s not about them, their personal journey, or their development.

It is more about the values and ideas they embody and their perception of the world that surrounds us. In simplest terms, I would describe this novel as a novel about life — about everyday moments, the ephemeral, the political, and the social. Instead of telling a story, Spring is asking a lot of questions, among which the most important are about the types of people we want to be and the values we want to represent. And while Ali Smith writes here about people and life in the post-Brexit UK, everything could be happening in all the countries of the Western world.

Conclusion

Reading Ali Smith’s Spring has been quite an experience for me. I’ve read after finishing it that it is not the best choice for first-time readers of Ali Smith. I have to say that I don’t quite agree with that. It definitely isn’t an easy read, especially because of Smith’s unusual style — she is playful with language, experimental with structure, and quite lyrical. Therefore, it is safe to say that she requires your full attention, focus, and patience.

If you are willing to give her this, you will absolutely enjoy Spring, regardless of whether you’ve read her other work. I know I did, and I can’t wait to read the other novels from the Seasonal Quartet.