What’s got Stephen Boylan turning the pages this month?

by Ali Smith (Penguin)

Ali Smith’s post-Brexit, Booker-shortlisted Autumn was a superb look at both a loving relationship and a country in flux. It was eviscerating about Britain in 2017, a country in the midst of an identity crisis, ruled by an amoral, indifferent Conservative Party, where doors are smeared with the words ‘Go Home’, where funding to universities is slashed, and where dismissive, dead-eyed officiousness rules. “When the state is not kind,” Smith wrote, “the people are fodder.”

Just over a year later comes its follow-up, Winter. Like its predecessor, it’s an inter-generational story that crisscrosses recent British history. At its centre is Sophia, a retired businesswoman living in a huge house in Cornwall. Estranged from her sister, Iris, she appears to be going to seed; she has become irascible with the people around her and has started to see a ghostly floating head in her field of vision.

Her son, Arthur, is due to spend Christmas with her and his girlfriend, Charlotte. After a massive fight which sees Charlotte smash his laptop, Arthur pays wise Croatian student Lux to pose as Charlotte for the holiday. When they arrive in Cornwall on Christmas Eve, they discover the frail Sophia, the house empty of food. A quick call to Iris gets the fridge filled quickly, and the uncomfortable quartet hunker down, ready to walk on eggshells.

Once all the pieces are in place, the story seems a tantalising prospect, with all the ingredients of a claustrophobic and tightly-wound stage play. However, whereas Autumn wore its post-referendum rage squarely on its sleeve, it feels as though Winter lacks a similar momentum. Smith’s anger flares at times; Iris is fiercely brilliant when she demolishes Sophia’s Leave-voting ‘friends’, but references to Grenfell Tower and Trump addressing that hall of scouts seem strangely detached and impotent on the page.

While Winter may not quite live up to the exceptional Autumn, that’s not to say I’m not already eagerly awaiting the next in the series. Smith remains a hugely inventive writer and, just like many of us looking grimly out our windows at the dark evenings, I’ll be hoping that Spring won’t be too long in coming.

Winter

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