Book review: Spring, By Ali Smith

Reviewing Winter, the second book in Ali Smith’s “Seasons Quartet” 16 months ago in our sister paper, Scotland on Sunday, Stuart Kelly said that the novelist she made him think of was Iris Murdoch. At first this surprised me, partly because Murdoch went in for intricate plotting. Whatever else her novels might have been, they were elegant pieces of carpentry, whereas Smith’s novels seem to be improvised – and improvised anew from page to page. Yet there is a resemblance because both Murdoch and Smith are concerned with the question of how we can live a good life in a time when the old certainties provided by organised religion have crumbled. Actually, one may find a closer resemblance between Smith and Murdoch’s friend and, in a sense, rival, Muriel Spark. Certainly in manner Smith is more Sparkish than Murdochian, though Spark might have treated the matter of Spring in 150 pages rather than more than 300.