Winter

Cleverly constructed and elegantly written. It's both an engaging human story and a place for wider topical observations. Bring on Spring * Evening Standard * If Ali Smith's four quartets in, and about, time do not endure to rank among the most original, consoling and inspiring of the artistic responses to 'this mad and bitter mess' of the present, then we will have plunged into an even bleaker mid-winter than people often fear * Financial Times * Smith is a specialist by now in using a quizzical, feather-light prose style to interrogate the heaviest of material...throughout Winter, grief and pain are transfigured, sometimes lastingly, by luminous moments of humour, insight and connection... Even in the bleak midwinter, Smith is evergreen * Telegraph * A novel of great ferocity, tenderness and generosity of spirit that you feel Dickens would have recognised...Smith is engaged in an extended process of mythologizing the present states of Britain... Luminously beautiful * Observer * A sparkler...tune in to Spring and Summer to see if art can save the day * Spectator * Graceful... That trademark mischievous wit and wordplay, a joyful reminder of the most basic, elemental delights of reading ... Infused with some much-needed humour, happiness and hope * Independent * A capacious, generous shapeshifter of a novel taking in Greenham Common and Barbara Hepworth, Shakespeare and global migration, it juxtaposes art with nature and protest with apathy, finding surprising alliances in a family riven by feuds. It's a book with Christmas at its heart, in all its familiarity and estrangement: about time, and out of time, like the festival itself * The Guardian * Dazzling second instalment of Ali Smith's seasonal quartet * The Daily Telegraph * A book I can't wait to read for Christmas * The Observer * Relish this instalment * The Times * I would like to be given Winter for Christmas * The Observer * And now looking forward to [Ali Smith's] Winter * Gordon Brown * And the book I'd most like to find in my Christmas stocking is Ali Smith's Winter * The Observer * Finally, under the tree this year I'm hoping to find Ali Smith's Winter * The Observer * It's a brisk, frosty walk under skies that could open at any moment revealing anything but snow * The Observer * A book I'd like to be given for Christmas: Winter by Ali Smith * The Observer * It takes you on a journey through time - Christmases past and present in a Dickensian way, but brings you bang up to the present - how can we live our lives and keep our memories and how do we find the truth? It is uplifting and miraculous with plenty of surprises along the way. It is vintage Smith * Jackie Kay * "Winter" is an insubordinate folk tale, with echoes of the fiction of Iris Murdoch and Angela Carter... There are few writers on the world stage who are producing fiction this offbeat and alluring... [Ali Smith] intends to send a chill up your shanks and she succeeds, jubilantly... Her dialogue is a series of pine cones flung at rosy cheeks * The New York Times * Smith is routinely brilliant, knowing, masterful... The light inside this great novelist's gorgeous snow globe is utterly original, and it definitely illuminates * New York Times Book Review * The only preparation required to savor the Scottish writer Ali Smith's virtuosic "Winter" is to pay attention to the world we've recently been living in...What Smith has achieved in her cycle so far is exactly what we need artists to do in disorienting times: make sense of events, console us, show us how we got here, help us believe that we will find our way through...Smith gives us a potent, necessary source of sustenance that speaks directly to our age...Yet we, like her characters, are past the winter solstice now - the darkest part of the coldest season done. From here on out, we're headed toward the light...It doesn't feel that way, I know. But in the midst of "Winter," each page touched with human grace, you might

Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of Spring, Winter, Autumn, Public library and other stories, How to be both, Shire, Artful, There but for the, The first person and other stories, Girl Meets Boy, The Accidental, The whole story and other stories, Hotel World, Other stories and other stories, Like and Free Love. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Bailey's Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Autumn was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017 and Winter was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2018. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.