Winter: 'Dazzling, luminous, evergreen’ Daily Telegraph (Seasonal Quartet) [Paperback] Smith, Ali

Guts to touch the political issue

I love reading Ali Smith, has Phenomenal Writing Style However I liked the other books from the quartet better

The four books by Ali Smith are not related and thus Winter is not a continuation to Autumn. It is actually set in the winter season and the story takes place around Christmas time but that's where the festive parallel ends. The novel is not a classic but rather a too-real take on humans and their imperfections.The themes of loneliness, modern-time relationships, politics, environment crisis, to name a few, are highlighted through the story of four characters- Sophia, her son Art, Lux, whom Art has hired to pretend as his girlfriend in front of his family and finally Sophia's sister, Iris. We love how she reveals surprising relationships between seemingly disparate narrative threads and many of them just hit too close to home for our socially active yet unsocial generation.The writing is just fresh and absolutely different from what we have read till now. It may seem a little difficult to make sense of the story as it goes back and forth in time and builds the characters through their childhood stories of the past Christmases. It becomes a little slow at times but the witty humor keeps you going.Surprisingly we still can't make up our minds whether we liked this novel or not but the only suggestion we have is to read it in one go and not take long breaks in between the readings. The entire charm of the book just gets lost in that case while reading it one is forced to pause, reread, and reflect on the absurdity of what our culture has become.

The second of Ali Smith's seasonal quartet and a delight in every way. Clever writing which often brings a smile about the deep issues that concern us, whether it is our pretensions, the state of the nation or the weirdness of families.If you have ever reflected on what a strange Christmas you have experienced, be comforted by the fruitful disaster of Art's family "celebration".

No inicio há uma "aparição" que me fez muito lembrar o conto "Angelita Unearthed" do livro "The Dangers of Smoking in Bed" de Mariana Enríquez mas, infelizmente, as semelhanças rapidamente se dissiparam.Demorei um bocadinho a entrosar com o livro, só mesmo a um terço de fim é que senti que tudo se compunha.Gostei muito da linguagem, do jogo de palavras, da narrativa não linear mas não senti que o livro me transmitisse muito, não senti grande ligação com as personagens, não me convenceram as mágoas nem o discurso ativista.

Even though at the beginning I felt it rather confusing, it got me little by little. The language is very rich, the vocabulary choice and the expressions. The characters are very well depicted and their predicaments so real!! The topics are varied and interesting, and the criticism she makes of the reaction to the world's problems is strong and moving.

This book is about art, nature, beauty, the absurd world we’re living in, and memories of some past attempts to change the world

It is said that this was adapted from Charles Dicken's "A Christmas Carol".However, I believe there are much qualitative difference between Dicken'sand "Winter", that is, Scrooge vs Marley and Sophia vs Iris.This novel reminds me of both Kazuo Ishiguro's "unreliable narrator's method" and Proustian way of making a story.This also has a fast tempo and is made from concise short sentences. That's very good.I had to contemplate how I could find a solution for this world's "multi-cultural" stateas well as the "divided" world today.I like it.