Summer by Ali Smith

 

"

"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."

 

The final instalment of Smith’s seasonal series does not instil the usual joy that the thought of summer normally invokes. Set slap bang in a COVID-19 world, this was not the escapism I needed to ease my mind and yet it boasts the lyrical prose so deftly wielded by Smith in its predecessors.


Commencing with the ramifications of BREXIT in the UK and encompassing political upheaval, environmental disasters (including Australia’s bushfires) and the previously mentioned pandemic, the book leaps over recent (and current) events in a way that I, as a reader, found harder to engage with. Call it misery overload; or perhaps my usual desire to escape anything too real or tragic (because sometimes the world outside can be a little too confronting), my recollections of the novel are scant. The contemporary issues could not be contained in my little brain in much the same way as I deal with the twenty-four-hour news cycle.


So, I’m overjoyed that I got through the full ‘year’ of the books and yet sad that this one didn’t leave as an indelible impression as some of the others. That’s not to say that it wasn’t a fantastic read, more that my reviewing has gotten way behind and I read it a couple of months ago. I apologise that this review is a little light on the ground.

5 out of 5 – sometimes this crazy world is hard to focus on.