I started this one a few times, and just couldn’t get into it, but them, as with Ali Smith’s writing when I was in the right place to understand and process her unique way of writing, and cutting into human emotion.

I still think Autumn is my favourite but this is an important and interesting addition to her body of work.

What is there to say really? A beautiful end to the most wonderful quartet.

Ali Smith is just wonderful and I am already grieving the end of this series.

Ali Smith continues to be one of the greatest writers of our time, her seasonal quartet finished on a high with Summer, beautifully written and thoughtful look at the world around us and so cleverly done. A real literary gem.

An impeccable conclusion to an absolutely stunning quartet of novels. Piercing, timely, astute. Where would we be without Smith's consistently accurate observations of the world we live in? I cannot wait to see what she does next and am sure I'll revisit each title as the seasons pass...

This is an achingly contemporary yet timeless novels covering themes of connectivity, isolation and the creation of art. As with the other novels in the four seasons novels Ali Smith uses inter-related stories from different points in recent history to explore fragmented families in extremis, and how great art and science has often flourished from those situations.

I’ve read and loved the previous three novels in this seasonal quarter so had been eagerly anticipating Summer and I’m so pleased to say that I loved it every bit as much, if not even more, than the previous books. Summer is set during World War 2 and during the pandemic in 2020 and I found it incredible. It was strange to read about the pandemic while we’re still living through it but it never felt too much. I loved how characters from previous books in the quartet appear in Summer and it felt like it brought us full circle. I will miss this quartet now it’s completed but I think I would read all of the books again in the future, it will be interesting years down the line to look back and see how they feel then. I definitely recommend all four books but start at the beginning with Autumn.

What a finale, this was an absolutely wonderful, emotional, thought provoking, introspective, heartfelt read. It really got me thinking, examining my life and my experiences, questioning many things. It forces us to look at what we have and what we know. The value the good and look through and around the bad to see what can be salvaged or reverse. It really is a fantastic read, a must for all. It completed Smith's literary quartet with absolute finesse. She really is a genius- down to earth, astute and so clever. She looks into life and all of its intricacies. She's a wonderfully talented writer who I intend to seek out repeatedly in the future.

I liked this overall but there sections i didn't really like. This was a good ending to the quartet and i like the overall message that Smith had in this. The writing was beautiful and the plot was non-linear but also linear in a sense it had specifics points it needed to hit.

Ive never read any books by this author before so had no idea what to expect but I knew this series of books have been highly thought of.
It was beautifully written and very thoughtful, it is very different to anything I usually read but can understand why it has been up for so many awards.

"This is a story about people on the brink of change. They're family, but they think they're strangers. So: where does family begin? And what do people who think they've got nothing in common have in common? Summer."

Ali Smith remains one of our greatest living writers, there's no doubt about it. Her seasonable quartet continues to be a beacon of brilliance, splicing the world around us with precision and expertly exploring what it is to be human.

Yeah, so this one wasn't for me. If anything, reading Summer actually made me realise how much I had underrated the previous 3 books in this quartet.

There's nothing inherently "wrong" with this one. The writing, again, is great and there are some glorious moments in here that ask you to sit back and just absorb what is being said, as is often the case over the course of these four books.

However, I think this feels like the messiest of the four. Where the other three books managed to feel timely and cut right into the heart of what was going on in the UK at the time they were written, Summer feels much broader in scope and loses that pointedness that the other books do so well.

To say it as simply as possible, I know I could read the other books in the quartet sometime in the future and date them to the time in our history they were discussing. I don't think I'd be able to identify the time Summer is commenting on so easily. Yes, there are mentions of Covid and George Floyd but with those removed, there is nothing significant that I recognise about the time Ali Smith is discussing that and certainly nothing that hadn't been done far better in previous entries.

Thanks to Penguin General UK and NetGalley for providing me with a copy for review.

Summer is the fourth and final book in Ali Smith’s Seasonal quartet. Like the others it’s very much a book of it’s time, referencing events in immediate news. I find Ali Smith’s work very hit or miss. I enjoyed Winter but didn’t like Spring and some of her other books I’ve just found a bit ‘meh’. Obviously she had to quickly shoehorn in Covid and lockdown but I feel you could tell it was rushed and it was a bit messy.

I definitely preferred Summer to Spring. I enjoyed the first section but then it jumped back in time for the middle section which I found a little jarring and I didn’t feel much of a connection to the characters. This is the fifth Ali Smith book I’ve read and I’m always left a little underwhelmed.

I wish I'd had the time to reread the previous three books from the quartet before this one - I felt like there were loads of little references and links that I probably missed as it's been a while since I've read the others. I felt this one was possibly one of the weaker ones in the series for me. I loved the sections about Daniel, and wanted more of those. I felt like the Greenlaw family were a bit underdeveloped, particularly the Brexit voting mother.
The writing and descriptions of the summer were lyrical and beautiful, and made me long for some hot weather.

What a wonderful ending to the Seasonal Quartet! Full of humour, insight, hope and pure beauty. I felt so much for all of the characters: every single one of them could have a whole novel written about them. A true literary page turner.

Lyrically written with utterly beautiful passages and wonderful characters - highly recommended reading

What an amazing conclusion to the Seasonal Quartet. I loved Autumn, Winter, and Spring so there were quite high expectations for Summer but they were met in a stunning way. A brilliant observation and interpretation of our world and certainly a book that will be recommended to readers all around the world.

And so Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet comes full circle with ‘Summer’. What a journey these four books have been – experimental fiction at its best written in the moment at a time of political and social upheaval. Challenging, sometimes grating, often uplifting, so many of the loose threads left dangling in the first three books are reconnected in this finale.
Ali Smith is a challenging author to read. You get comfortable with one story and a couple of characters who she then abandons to tell you about someone else who seems completely disconnected. At times there are passages which seem to belong to no character, where the authorial voice shows through. It can feel as if the manuscripts for two or three novels have been thrown in the air and landed randomly on your Kindle. But then, as you come close to the end of this fourth book, all the disparate stories start to connect. Read ‘Summer’, the last in Smith’s Seasonal Quartet, when your brain is in full gear otherwise you will miss so much.
The story starts in Brighton with Sacha and Robert Greenlaw, teenage siblings, precocious, curious, competitive, committed and awkward. Following a trick Robert plays on his sister, two strangers visit the home where they live with their mum Grace. The strangers, Charlotte and Arthur, are the first characters from previous books to reappear. And so begins a journey to Norfolk, inspired by Einstein, motivated by a promise, towards answers, towards mystery, no one seems to really know.
Smith says summer is ‘heading towards both light and dark. Because summer isn’t just a merry tale. Because there’s no merry tale without darkness.’ Smith’s tales always feature darkness and here it is the wartime stories of Daniel Gluck and his father interned on the Isle of Man and of Daniel’s sister in France. How, I wondered as I read, will Smith connect the Greenlaws, Charlotte, Arthur and the Glucks? That is what kept me reading, to discover the meaning of summer in this story and to these particular characters. Smith says ‘summer’s surely really all about an imagined end. We head for it instinctually like it must mean something.’ There is so much depth in her exploration of theme – paralleling ‘The Winter’s Tale’, for example, and her own summer tale via the remembered summer of Grace when a young Shakespearean actress – more than I can explain here. You have to read it for yourself.
I do wish for old-fashioned punctuation, speech marks and clearly delineated changes of voice, the lack of which interrupts the flow of my reading and takes me away from the story – surely that can’t be the conscious objective of any author.
I will re-read this quartet back-to-back, without pause, hoping to gain more understanding and nuance. Individually, the novels are challenging and at times mystifying. Collectively, they become something else entirely. I suspect in years to come I will see a different interpretation.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

The seasonal quartet comes to a conclusion with “Summer” which is set in the troubling spring of 2020. Teenagers Sacha and Robert know about the problems the planet faces, not just the virus which locks them down, but climate change, the refugee crisis, Brexit and the unreliability of media and the political class make them ponder about the times they are living in. But it is not only the big issues that trouble the siblings, also the typical quarrels of brother and sister and their parents’ separation occupy their minds. But other times, too, challenged people and nevertheless lead to great outcomes.

Once more, just like in her former novels, not only the ones belonging to the quartet, there is so much in it which makes it really difficult to review. Many aspects mentioned are worth commenting on, in the first place, Ali Smith’s writing, again, is simply marvellous, the way she uses language in this specific novel also moves to a metalevel discussing words and the ability to express oneself also without using oral language. In a times when words are misused to blind and mislead people – some doing this even quite overtly – you have to become even more careful with what you say and easily realise that maybe the language as we know and use it is not enough anymore.

I really adored her characters in this novel, first and foremost Robert, even though he also behaves, quite typical for his age, nasty at times. He is on the brink of losing his childish innocence, clever as he is, he asks questions and investigates and even though only 13 years old, can brilliantly analyse the politicians’ deceit. When investigating Einstein, a mastermind he admires for his scientific achievement, he also becomes aware of the fact that sometimes, people can have two sides at the same time which might be difficult to bring together.

Topics which were addressed in the former parts are now picked up again and thus, “Summer” forms a perfect conclusion. Even with the sheer mass of big problems, Smith’s novel provides hope, especially with the young generation portrayed here. They are heroes and have the capacity of making a change. For Sacha, climate activists, NHS workers and Black Lives Matter protesters are heroes according to her definition:

“I have a vision that the modern sense of being a hero is like shining a bright light on things that need to be seen. I guess that if someone does this it brings its own consequences.”

In her understanding, everybody can become a hero, we only have to start.

Hmmm. I wonder what this book was going to be pre-2020.

While reading Spring, I did think that 'oh if lockdown/pandemic *must* be in a book in the near future, then Ali Smith is one of the authors I would trust to do so'. I still think that, but perhaps when we are a little bit more removed from the situation....but then you can't write a seasonal quartet based around the current state of the world, and Britain within that world, without mentioning the pandemic and lockdown. So Smith must have revisited parts of the novel to fit the climate of the past 6 months, most of it organically but some parts not quite so. It's this that creates or adds to a somewhat unevenness to the novel. Considering the turnaround of writing/editing/publishing and the mental stress of living through a pandemic and lockdown, Smith really does as well as anyone could have. With more thought, you realise that it is more of a commentary on who her characters represent when their views on the pandemic, lockdown, and wearing masks are easily inserted. These characters would ultimately be the same regardless of the information.

Unfortunately there were parts of the novel I loved, and other parts dragged and I got bored. I found myself easily distracted and willing to put the book down. My thoughts and feelings are all over the place for it, the blending together didn't quite work for me.

As a stand alone novel, it doesn't quite do it and would lean more towards a 3 star...but as the final book in a series of four bringing together characters from past novels it was more enjoyable. I think I will re-read the series again in the future and may gain more appreciation.

Thank you to netgalley and to the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This is the final book in a quartet exploring Britain in the modern age, as we are torn apart as a nation by politics in general and the Brexit issue in particular. The novels are all so up to the minute that one can only admire the speed of response to the changing world around us. They are clever, critical and suggest a deep concern about the way our nation is moving. All four books are, for me, a must read.