I was gifted a free eARC* of this book by the publisher, via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

*eARC: electronic Advanced Readers Copy

Summer is the finale in Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet, the other titles being (unsurprisingly) Autumn, Winter, and Spring. Despite being a part of a larger series, there is no need to read the series in order, or to have read the other books in the series before picking up Summer if you do not wish to. I’ve had the Seasonal Quartet on my TBR for some while, and Winter is sat on my shelf, but I have to admit I haven’t yet read any of the other books. All the books are connected thematically, and I understand that some characters recur across the quartet, but there isn’t a narrative thread that draws them all together. I think personally I would have preferred to have read the other three first so I could experience them in the order Ali Smith intended (assuming she did in fact intend to have them read in the order of publication — this may not be the case, and if anyone knows otherwise, please do correct me!), but I definitely didn’t need to have read them to follow, understand and enjoy Summer.

I’ve seen Ali Smith’s quality of writing praised over the last couple of years, and I wasn’t disappointed. The book flows really well, bridging different characters, different time periods, different perspectives without missing a beat. There were some sections that really stood out to me as beautiful prose, but there was enough balance that the beauty of the writing didn’t overshadow the actual content of the writing itself. I devoured the whole 400 page book in just two days because the writing made it so easy to just sit and read. I barely noticed the time passing until I glanced at my kindle and saw I was over 60% of the way through (I’d sat down to continue reading at 30%, and how time had flown!).

This is mostly a contemporary novel — perhaps too contemporary if anything (we’ll get to that in a minute), but as I mentioned, Smith bridges different time periods and perspectives. The historical elements are told through flashbacks, though the character is remembering them as if he is still there, in the midst of WWII. I was really intrigued by this aspect of the narrative, and I think it might be something that is also present in some of the other books, so I’d love to read more of this plot line. I really hope this plot line recurs in the earlier books, because I really want to know more! I’ve read so much WWII historical fiction, but never from the perspective of Germans in England, which is what Summer addresses.

The main issue I had with this book is how contemporary it is, as I mentioned earlier. It somehow manages to get in a reference to George Floyd, and repeated references to coronavirus and lockdown/quarantine that felt very strange to read. I felt a little uncomfortable to be honest, reading a fictionalised version of a very real, very challenging situation that we’re all currently living through.Perhaps that’s just a me thing and other readers won’t feel the same, and I am entirely willing to accept that. I just think situations like this are best considered in fiction with the benefit of hindsight which, of course, we don’t currently have. If we are to accept that the book takes place in summer, ie, at th moment, then it feels really as if coronavirus isn’t made enough of a deal out of. The children (teenaged, not primary aged) are still meant to be attending school, the family invite strangers into their home and go on a road trip with them… These events haven’t been able to happen since March, which is decidedly not summer.

The majority of the characters in this book were really interesting, and examine a lot of other contemporary political issues including Brexit and the rise of the alt-right. The son in the family at the centre of much of the novel, Robert, represents the rise of the alt-right with his extreme beliefs and frequent disagreements with his older sister, Sacha, about her climate change activism. Sacha was a really interesting character to read, and I really admired her morals. Robert, however, obviously has very different views to his sister, and also to me, but that wasn’t the reason I didn’t enjoy his character as much as the others. The main issue I had with Robert as a character was that he often felt several years older than he actually was. He was meant to be 13, but his speech and thinking were more that of an older teen, though his actions were more that of a 13 year old. Sometimes his speech patterns did read more like a young person trying to sound intellectual (“In exactement” is a favourite phrase of his), but his depth of thinking and vocabulary definitely registered more as an older teen. Unless I just am old and totally out of touch with teenagers now, but I’m only 21, and basing this off my experience of being a 13 year old!

Overall, I think I didn’t enjoy Summer as much as I expected I would because the series has been so hyped up. I totally understand the praise for Smith’s writing style, but I personally wasn’t a fan of such current events being incorporated into the book (though that is my opinion — it doesn’t make the book bad!), and I didn’t feel like Robert really worked as a thirteen year old. Had he been older I would have found his character more believable, and therefore interesting to read.

3.5 stars.

Oh dear! This is the third Ali Smith Seasons book I have read and I’m no further ahead in ‘getting it’.
I found with all three of them that there were parts of each book I loved and then other bits where I just couldn’t keep my attention on them and found myself reading faster to get to a ‘better bit’.
I can appreciate Smith’s writing but yet again, I just don’t think she’s my cup of tea.

* Thanks to Penguin UK and Netgalley for the ARC

As one of Smith's characters says ' What art does is, it exists...and then because we encounter it, we remember we exist too. And that one day we won't.' The Seasonal quartet has been a masterclass in contemporary writing, and the creative art. Watching Smith adjust to the unexpected twists that existence threw in her path has been a fascinating experience, as if fate had become an overly-enthusiastic co-writer - social media, fake news, lie culture, racism, sexism, climate crisis, Brexit and finally, in a plot twist that even the most obvious hack would have avoided as being too histrionic, - Covid-19. Smith employs the raw material and navigates it majestically. Summer may bring the series to a conclusion of sorts, but it is open, accepting of an undetermined but hopeful future and changing seasons.
Like the Hockney paintings on each cover, the landscape of the novels change and adapt to the elements but the essence remains unchanged.
Smith's themes of hope, faith in humanity and simple everyday heroism run through her cast of characters who, as the series progresses, appear to offer some hint of a large complex narrative that they are all interacting within. Other outliers like Lorenza Mazetti, Greta Thunberg, Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin and Shakespeare offer ciphers, keys to understanding and accepting existence, or suggesting pathways to change. To be able to do all this and more, in a series of books which are seductively readable and effortlessly enjoyable is the mark of a great writer. Smith's characters are real; we share components with each and every one of them; our fears, dreams and desires are similar, even when our circumstances are so individual.
To use one Smith's own metaphors her books are the 'inflatable life jackets' that help us to escape 'Grief Island' when 'the weather roughens'. But they are also art at its best, and will be appreciated as such in years to come, with their changing seasons.

This is the second book I read by Ali Smith and I found it brilliant.
It's a great book that talks about current issues and it can be funny, poignant, enraging at the same time.
It's surely engrossing and once you start you cannot put it down.
The style of writing is great and I love it.
It's strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

This final part in Smith's seasonal quartet does everything a reader could have hoped for it to do. The line that has been slowly drawing each story together comes full circle (just like the seasons - imagine!) and the craft involved in achieving that with such art and warmth and humanity is astonishing. As ever, the politics are stated clearly on the page and while that's likely to be off-putting to some, in this final part of the quartet in particular it only veers occasionally towards didactic and even then does so with such lightness and grace it feels entirely within keeping. I can't think of another writer who would be able to deliver such a considered, sweeping tale that is so clearly years in the making with such up-to-date considerations. Summer is a standout novel to be read and recommended on its own. Within the context of the series it's a triumph – the quartet as a whole is infinitely more than the sum of its (not at all inconsiderable) parts.

I've had the others in this series for months but hadn't read them. When I got this as an advanced copy I brushed off the other three and read one every day for four days. I think this is one of the best series I have ever read and easily my top read of 2020. It's magnificent as a series, and I would recommend you read them in order to experience the complete splendour of this work. Multi-faceted, humane, breathtakingly clever without being impenetrable or lofty. It is beautiful and funny and sad and everything you want in a book, but could so easily be a symphony or a painting or a film. I try to explain the plots of the books to people and I don't do them justice, because it is a bit like the part of the book where someone is explaining how a scientist looked through a slice of a dragon fly's eye and suddenly realised how multi faceted the world is depending on the way you look at it. This book is about so many things, and to pick one is to do it an deep injustice. This book brings Daniel's story to completion in the most beautiful way but also talks about lockdown, the rise of the far right, art, history, science, perspective and love. So much love. It's beautiful.

After a slight decline with Spring Ali Smith is back to her playful, compassionate best with Summer. As with Autumn and the EU referendum the Coronavirus that stalks around the tale is resonant and painful while we fine ourselves still struggling with the pandemic. Many of the themes and characters are familiar from earlier instalments, racism (managing to include the tragic death of George Floyd is remarkable considering that it happened just days before proofs were printed), immigration, intergenerational conflict, art and artists, lies and deception (particularly from governments), Shakespeare and Dickens. Most of all it has her lucid, luminous prose, her masterful wordplay and her ability to create powerful, resonating chapters, in this one "So?" to capture the debilitating power of apathy. In her characters and their relationship she also has a remarkable perception of humanity and it complexities. And one thing I love despite all the darkness and uncertainty Smith finds (and creates) hope through art. The quartet has been a huge success and Summer ends it brilliantly.

If you asked me to describe what Summer was about, I'm not sure I'd be able to - or at least not without writing another novel in response.

Ali Smith's prose is almost like free-writing: you never quite know where it's going to take you. And I think Summer might just be her most transportive work yet. The thematic ground she covers is expansive, but her intimate approach through the eyes of several characters makes the experience immediate and real. She has mastered the art of slippage between space and time, tying her themes together with some key characters and motifs.

Summer is also very much a novel of the moment, addressing recent and current world events. In many ways, reading it feels a little like opening a time capsule onto summer 2020. But Smith also never loses the context of history, and I hope this means it will age well.

Reading Summer captures the daydream feeling of a summer afternoon: "Even while I'm right at the heart of it I just can't get to the heart of it."

Summer is the last book in Ali Smith’s fantastic quartet, which I have been reading since Autumn 2019 during the seasons that they were set. Each book is a slice of absolutely contemporary British life, with references to concerns and feelings that people in this country are having right now. Summer is so up to date that there are even references to the George Floyd protests.

All four books are characterised by a number of interweaving themes and interesting protagonists, rather than by a strong narrative plot. I would like to go back and re-read all four consecutively as one large novel, and maybe identify the themes I wasn’t clever enough to pick up the first time.

Summer was a wonderful conclusion to the quartet and thoroughly deserves 5 stars from me. I hope that it is nominated for (and wins!) many awards this year.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

What a fabulous ending to the Seasonal quartet. Summer brings together some of the characters and themes from the previous books and does it beautifully. Reading it was a very rewarding as well as an emotional experience. I didn’t want it to end but of course, it ended at exactly the right point.

Ali Smith is a wonderful writer, intelligent, playful, imaginative and inspirational. Summer is my book of the year so far and I’m very much looking forward to rereading the quartet as one now that all the books have been published.

Thank you Penguin and Netgalley, I’m delighted to have been given the opportunity to read an advance copy of Summer.

The final part of Smith’s seasons quartet and it doesn’t disappoint. As always, Smith gets straight to the heart of the matter and dives straight into the current affairs of 2020, including the Covid-19 pandemic and the recent murder of George Floyd. Smith doesn’t pull any punches “the people in charge of England right now are geniuses of manipulation”.

As with her other books, Summer can be read independently but there are elements of Autumn, Winter and Spring to be discovered throughout and what a delight to make the connections through the series. I didn’t want the story to end and I was disappointed when I finished!

Smith’s novels are truly poetic and multi-layered and it is a joy to read them. Can’t wait to read them all again.

And so the excellent seasonal quartet is completed with Summer a time for hope (not hate). Once again Ali Smith considers the state of a country that has struggled with itself since 2016 and now has to face a pandemic. The novel is up to date, as always, even including a reference to the tragic murder of George Floyd.

As with all the books in this series Summer is shining a light on our politicians, their incompetence, and their cruel treatment of some of the most vulnerable in our society. The pandemic has highlighted the incompetence of those that wanted to be in a position of power to make money for themselves and their pals. The state institutions that they wanted to destroy, the people who have never been properly valued are now holding this country together.
This novel uses many of the characters and themes in previous novels and once again S4A4 a private security firm is there to carry out the governments cruel policies.
In Spring we read about the Immigration Removal Centres and in Summer we learn about the migrant camps in the 1940s which included Jewish German migrants. We learn about Einstein spending time in Norfolk.

Having completed the series I will now return to the beginning and read all four books again as I feel there. are so many links and connections that reading the four novels as one, rather than separately, will help me connect the different threads.

Summer is the final book in an excellent series. All four books are highly recommended.

Ali Smith could scarcely have chosen more interesting times for the setting for her quartet of seasonal novels and ‘Summer’ has finished the progression off appropriately, if the story can ever be said to be finished. I can’t better the many reviews already out there detailing the links between the four books and I can appreciate that they are probably best read close together in sequence.

Everything I enjoy about her writing is here - engaging characters, cultural references and her observations about language (I was especially taken with the discussion of the term ‘letterbox’). A couple of examples that struck me most:

‘I don’t want all those old shed-skin selves following me everywhere putting their footprints all through the good clean new-fallen snow of my life.’

‘And summer’s surely really all about an imagined end. We head for it instinctually like it must mean something. We’re always looking for it, looking to it, heading towards it all year, the way a horizon holds the promise of a sunset. We’re always looking for the full open leaf, the open warmth, the promise that we’ll one day soon surely be able to lie back and have summer done to us; one day soon we’ll be treated well by the world. Like there really is a kinder finale and it’s not just possible but assured, there’s a natural harmony that’ll be spread at your feet, unrolled like a sunlit landscape just for you.’

Just brilliant, not to be missed, though the first in the series ‘Autumn’ remains my favourite.

This is a marvellous and thoughtful novel that captures the horrors of 2020. I came to it without having read the three previous novels. I found it funny, sad, beautiful and so many things in between. I now intend to go back and read Autumn, Winter and Spring.

The last of the seasonal quartet and what a finale. A contemporary novel encompassing the current affairs of 2020 thus far – Brexit, global COVID-19 pandemic, immigration detention centres, homelessness and the murder of George Floyd. These highly topical subjects are all cleverly woven into each of the seemingly separate backstories, that themselves are intriguingly connected. It would be interesting to read an alternative version of Summer if these horrors of 2020 hadn’t occurred.
Each of the brilliant quartet novels stands alone, but together they are a masterpiece.

After reading the first three of the quartet, I was curious as to how Ali Smith might somehow manage to tie everything together with this closing instalment.. Familiar faces from all prior seasons return throughout Summer, but more than closing the circle, the last in the series ends things on an open, incomplete, hopeful note. Although it's not easy to see the current global (and UK) crises as anything but chaos partly wrought by joyless opportunists, Smith convinces us -- at least for the duration of the book, a miraculous enough feat as Covid-19 and Brexit doubly devastate the national psyche -- that much bigger changes, way beyond parochial, money-grubbing agendas and the mendacious marshalling of the masses against their own interests, are always afoot, and that, sappy as it may sound (these are the least cynical works of fiction I can think of, despite numerous barbs against predictable villains), faith in the best of us -- and the sense that we're all fundamentally the same -- has never been more important. Resistance is not futile. There are always heroic, galvanising, against-the-grain examples -- Lorenza Mazetti, Greta Thunberg, Albert Einstein -- if we need them, and we've rarely needed them more.

'And summer's surely really all about an imagined end. We head for it instinctually like it must mean something. We're always looking for it, looking to it, heading towards it all year, the way a horizon holds the promise of a sunset. We're always looking for the full open leaf, the open warmth, the promise that we'll one day soon surely be able to lie back and have summer done to us; one day soon we'll be treated well by the world. Like there's really a kinder finale and it's not just possible but assured, there's a natural harmony that'll be spread at your feet, unrolled like a sunlit landscape just for you. As if what it was always all about, your time on earth, was the full happy stretch of all the muscles of the body on a warmed patch of grass, one long sweet stem of that grass in the mouth.

Care free.

What a thought.

Summer.

The Summer's Tale.

There's no such play.

Don't be fooled, Grace.

The briefest and slipperiest of the seasons, the one that won't be held to account -- because summer won't be held at all, except in bits, fragments, moments, flashes of memory of socalled or imagined perfect summers, summers that never existed.

Not even this one she's in exists. Even though it's apparently the best summer so far of the century. Not even when she's quite literally walking down a road as beautiful and archetypal as this through an actual perfect summer afternoon.

So we mourn it while we're in it.

Look at me walking down a road in summer thinking about the transience of summer.

Even while I'm right at the heart of it I just can't get to the heart of it.'

Thank you Netgalley and Penguin UK for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.

Summer is the fourth and final novel in Ali Smith's seasonal quartet, once again combining past and present and punning language to explore different episodes with current relevance. In this one, the climate crisis, COVID-19, internment camps, and Einstein are all important, along with the previous recurring themes of immigration and detention centres, and of family and divides. The modern day narrative starts with Sacha and her brother Robert live in Brighton, where Sacha wants to change the world and Robert seems to delight in upsetting it, and their parents have split up but live next door to each other. After this, the narrative jumps to the 1940s, and then continues to move around different character's stories to bring things together.

The main question I had going into Summer was whether it would feature coronavirus, considering how up to date the other ones were, and it does, though doesn't focus on it extensively. From reading other comments about it, it is apparent that there's a lot of recurring things and characters from the previous three books, though the only one I noticed was the security firm that run the detention centres, as it's a while since I've read the others. Overall, I found this one harder to get into than the others—I enjoyed the start in the present day, but as the narrative moved around, I couldn't keep track of who people were or why they mattered. Possibly it would've been better to read immediately after rereading the other three, as then it would've likely felt like a kind of conclusion or coming together, so this might be one only for people who've read (and remember well) the other seasonal novels.

After reading all four, I think Spring was my favourite, and this one didn't feel like it went anywhere. However, it did feature a lot of expected Ali Smith elements and it was nice to have a book that picked up on some of the political concerns of COVID-19 without being a 'pandemic' novel. The whole quartet might be something to go back and reread further away from the 'modern day' that they weave in with historical narratives, and to fully appreciate how they link together.

This novel touched on so many people's stories and when it ended I just wanted to hear more.(which I always see as a good thing). I think the story of Grace and John is my favourite - the lines are so beautifully written and vividly described.

Ali Smith is still on form and I think this was such a wonderful way to end the seasonal quartet - I'm just sad there won't be more!

Beautiful cover, too.

Summer. The word and all it's connotations has drastically changed in 2020 and Ali Smith has taken a stab at it.
Impressively featuring contemporary references to the George Floyd killing and protests, and letters written by a character on July 1st 2020.
While sometimes these details can feel a bit tacked on, compared to the more wrought sections about the Daniel Gluck and his experience in the Isle of Man internment camp during WW2.
Overall I really enjoyed this book, part standard Smith fare - the reader learns loads about an esoteric part of history- part ambitious chronicle of our times.
Sometimes you don't have to be the best, just the first.
Einstein On The Heath (Rating: 7/10)

‘Summer is a merry tale out of a sad one’. Well we live in hope it’s a merry one.

Well, you either like Ali Smith’s style or you don’t but what I do like about her books is that they are different and thoughtful. This is the final book in the seasonal quartet and I really wish I’d read them back to back because they are instalments of one book. There are recurring characters both real and fictional, a recurring organisation in S4A4 with the same themes running throughout. These include political comments (often swipes rather than takes!) current events, art and literature.

I really like the start of this one with the Greenlaw family in Brighton which is darkly funny and wickedly clever in places. It is set in the context of a post Brexit and Covid19 world and I like how one of the messages is that of hope once this is beaten. The first part introduces the theme of Space and Time as 13 year old Robert is fascinated by Einstein and Words as a character is composing a modern lexicography. Some of that is very funny. I love Grace Greenlaw’s reflections on a marvellous and immortal summer she spends in Suffolk in 1989 where she is acting in plays. Grace reminds us that we are always heading towards summer (well I certainly am!) but it’s a slippery season and it’s transient. I also love the letters Sacha writes to Hero in the detention centre from Spring in which she vividly describes our summer bird visitor - the swift. Swifts are also summer to me and so this resonates. I log their arrival like Sacha (usually 6/5 - 12/5 here), observe and marvel at their aeronautic acrobatics and weep at their departure in early August as they head back to Africa. They are the most incredible birds as Sacha demonstrates vividly. I like the art theme which this time features Lorenza Mozzetti and the literature with Shakespeare’s Winters Tale, Dickens and Keats.

However, the book lost me in the middle although I can see how it links to the detention centres which is a focus of Spring and the characters are from Autumn but it does find its way back again in the final third and you understand how it relates to the first section.

Overall, it’s clever and I really like parts of it although Autumn remains my favourite of the four. I will read them again but this time as one rather than separately then I think the links between all four will have deeper meaning.

With thanks to NetGalley and Penguin General UK, Hamish Hamilton for the ARC.