Victor Gijsbers Bookwyrm reviewed Winter by Ali Smith
Powerful, scattered family history
4 stars
It feels like a romcom plot. Art(hur) has been quarrelling with his girlfriend Charlotte. But he has promised his distant, seemingly cold mother that he'll bring her along for Christmas. Morbidly afraid of disappointing her, he hires random-girl-in-the-street Lux to take the place of Charlotte. Add a weird aunt who hasn't talked to the mother in years, but who is now called on to help; and Charlotte's funny though harsh online vengeance; and you have all the ingredients of a soppy feel good story.
Interestingly, Smith makes us feel relatively good, even though the background to the novel consists of Brexit, nuclear weapons protests, poisons that turn the land into a deadly hellscape, and in the last pages the Grenfell Tower fire. In this kaleidoscopic, wildly out-of-order narration, the trappings of romcom plots take on a new life and vitality, no doubt in part because they are juxtaposed with real-life …
It feels like a romcom plot. Art(hur) has been quarrelling with his girlfriend Charlotte. But he has promised his distant, seemingly cold mother that he'll bring her along for Christmas. Morbidly afraid of disappointing her, he hires random-girl-in-the-street Lux to take the place of Charlotte. Add a weird aunt who hasn't talked to the mother in years, but who is now called on to help; and Charlotte's funny though harsh online vengeance; and you have all the ingredients of a soppy feel good story.
Interestingly, Smith makes us feel relatively good, even though the background to the novel consists of Brexit, nuclear weapons protests, poisons that turn the land into a deadly hellscape, and in the last pages the Grenfell Tower fire. In this kaleidoscopic, wildly out-of-order narration, the trappings of romcom plots take on a new life and vitality, no doubt in part because they are juxtaposed with real-life horrors. And while they do not always lead to the exact outcomes we expect from the genre, there's enough hope and positivity here that Winter does what Winter ought to do: point towards Spring.
An entertaining, superbly written novel that makes us feel alive.