Back in 2016, Ali Smith wrote one of the finest opening lines in recent literature: “It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.” It seems utterly adorable now to think that she had Brexit in mind when she wrote it.
The novel, Autumn, treated Brexit in manner that now seems to weirdly mirror Covid. Brexit was this nationwide disease, something that had poisoned minds and led to deaths. There was anger and frustration; some tried to just carry on with their lives but for many everything was changed utterly.
Summer, the final instalment of Smith’s Seasonal Quartet, contains many references to Covid and the lockdown, creating this weird and uncanny mirror between the first and final novels that reads almost too perfectly, too planned out, as if Smith knew the pandemic was coming this whole time . . .
The quartet (Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer) reflects not only the seasons, but our modern times. The books have become known for their recurring threads, which turns the reading experience into something of a treasure hunt.
Some of these threads include each novel’s focus on a woman artist, the first lines that quote Dickens, how one character always has a direct link to a landmark political event, the mysterious security firm SA4A, Charlie Chaplin, fences, Shakespeare, and finger-on-the-pulse references to current events. There are so many links between the novels that someone has actually made a Seasonal Quartet bingo card, where players tick off squares such as “Eloquent non-native English speaker” and “Bureaucracy”.
Skeleton key
Summer delivers these tropes with aplomb and serves as a skeleton key to the series. Whilst the three other novels can be read and appreciated independently, Summer, much like the season itself, shines brighter through the memories of Autumn, Winter and Spring.
In Summer, we meet the Greenlaws. Sacha idolises Greta Thunberg and sees nothing but injustice in the world; Robert, her genius younger brother, is obsessed with the life and work of Albert Einstein and whose unfiltered nature forces him into being an outcast. They live with their mother in a house right next to their father’s, who lives with his much younger girlfriend. So far, so Smith. We follow the lives of the Greenlaws from Brexit to lockdown, but that is only one plotline.
One of the main characters of Autumn was Daniel Gluck, the elderly man who lays on a bed in a care home, barely conscious, for most of the novel. Autumn is peppered with Daniel’s dream sequences, some of which portrayed a young Daniel and the relationship he had with his younger sister Hannah, whose name he struggles to remember near the end. They revealed a sinister beginning to Daniel’s life, but Autumn ended with no clear explanation or exploration of his younger years.
English POW
In Summer we finally meet young Daniel Gluck and his father, currently detained in a POW camp. A somewhat forgotten aspect of British political history (one for the bingo card) was the UK government’s decision to assess every single British resident who was of German origin to determine whether they were “enemy aliens” or not. As the war progressed and the risk of Nazi invasion grew, many German immigrants who lived in the south of England were interned, despite the fact the vast majority of them were Jewish and had fled to Britain to escape the Nazis.
Daniel and his father had been swept up in this hysteria and dumped in a camp in Ascot. Although the camp is never named in the novel, it did very much exist. Its name? Winter Quarters Camp.
Smith balances both of these plots beautifully, even when they begin to shoot out vines that entangle themselves in characters and plots from Winter and Spring. However, as everything is slowly revealed to be linked and the true breadth of Smith’s project is realised, one begins to realise that the Seasonal Quartet has been a lie. These have never actually been four independent novels, but rather four sections of a single, massive work, with Summer serving as the showstopping finale.
And what a finale. Summer is simply astonishing. Most of us had little doubt that Smith would deliver (because, realistically, has she ever produced a sub-par book?) but Summer somehow exceeded every one of my expectations. It is fitting, in my mind anyway, to think of the Seasonal Quartet as a symphony. Summer is the final movement, all joy and celebration, a climax that has been building for some time. Themes and motifs from earlier movements appear once again, in rondo form, as the orchestra plays all at once. Then bang, whimper, it all ends. There is deathly silence followed by a manic crash of applause.
The great work is done. Time to go home.
