Book review: Winter, by Ali Smith

“Oh wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?” One of the intrigues of Ali Smith’s proposed quartet of novels, of which this is the second, is how the narrative arc will reflect the emotions we impose upon the seasons, given that at the same time she is cresting across the contemporary in a manner few novelists can manage. Spring – let alone summer – implies something getting better, warmer and kinder. It is hard at present to see what that might be. Certainly, Winter opens with a capriccio of melancholy. “God was dead: to begin with. And romance was dead. Chivalry was dead. Poetry, the novel, painting, they were all dead. Theatre and cinema were both dead. Literature was dead. The book was dead. Modernism, postmodernism, realism and surrealism were all dead.” What is not dead is allegory.