Review: 'Summer,' by Ali Smith

Ali Smith has been called "Scotland's Nobel-laureate-in waiting," her seasonal quartet breathing vigor into the tired conceit that the personal is political. With "Summer," the final installment, she looms her themes and arcs — Brexit, the refugee crisis, women artists, the surge of demagogues such as Boris Johnson and Donald Trump — into a shimmering tapestry of rage and redemption.

Mostly set in southern Britain in February 2020, "Summer" tracks a fearful nation in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as businesses grind to a halt and families shelter, glowering, in their houses. A middle-aged divorcée with a theatrical background, Grace Greenlaw grapples with parenting her two teenagers, Sacha, a liberal firebrand, and Robert, the astute if difficult younger brother. To Sacha, "it's as if Robert has attached a dimmer switch to his own brilliance and like he is randomly turning it down as low and dark as it can go then thunking it up to dazzling. … He flickers and flashes like one of the arcade machines on the pier."

An unexpected meeting lures the family back into the past as they journey for an audience with Daniel Gluck, a 104-year-old languishing in a limbo where his memories of World War II meld with conflicts from the here and now. (Readers will recognize Daniel from "Autumn," the first novel in the quartet; Smith braids characters from her other books into "Summer," a startling, gratifying method.) She's at the top of her game here, dovetailing flashbacks with foreground story in sumptuous sentences, capturing the shameful plight of World War II — and present-day — detainees.

"Summer" argues passionately for art as our best weapon to vanquish the chaos of the present, probing the season's gossamer mystique with a delicate array of motifs: a mysterious sculpture, a female avant-garde filmmaker, Einstein, flocks of swifts, even Shakespeare. As Grace notes: " 'The Winter's Tale' is all about summer, really. It's like it says, don't worry, another world is possible. When you're stuck in the world at its worst, that's important. To be able to say that."

The Shakespeare allusion is critical; as with the miraculous rebirth of Hermione at the end of the play, the Greenlaws stir into new life, blooming against the backdrop of a world on the brink, peering into a night sky "at the lit pinpoints in the dark that meant the ancient and original and already dead stars."

"Summer" explores the quaint notion of transcendence: What does it mean, exactly, in a year when so much has gone wrong? Smith challenges us to step outside our comfort zones to face what awaits us. (Her feat is all the more stunning as she was still writing the novel just weeks ago; there are mentions of pandemic lockdowns and the George Floyd protests.)

She's a happy warrior, though: a magnanimous stylist with an ear like none other, a command of both mania and poise that feels beautifully tailored to our time. With its jubilant final act, the seasonal quartet assures that Smith will be studied for decades to come, a beacon to future readers eager to wrest meaning from our turbulent moment.

Hamilton Cain is the author of "This Boy's Faith: Notes From a Southern Baptist Upbringing" and a member of the National Book Critics Circle. He lives in Brooklyn.

Summer
By: Ali Smith.
Publisher: Pantheon, 400 pages, $27.95.