We enter the universe of Ali Smith. A highly recognized narrator in the British Isles and in the Anglo-Saxon world as one of the great current authors. His arrival in Spain occurred with the irregularity of the writers who do not finish reaching the general reading public beyond the shores of their own language. But as on many other occasions, this has nothing to do with the quality of the narrative proposal.
Until with its volume compendium of some works let's say that of seasonal allegory it was winning us all. The four novels of each season (with a starting point in the autumn languor that serves as a fascinating blank canvas), go back to life, existence, drives, human ambition and everything that in any way marks our passage. around the world.
So Ali Smith can already sit at the table of that other great Scottish writer as he is ian rankin, of a more commercial aspect in the black genre and which it complements as always is necessary in all creative variety of essential labeling such as origin.
Top 3 Recommended Novels by Ali Smith
Fall
Conventions, agreements towards the achievement of order in chaos. The reason capable of configuring, almost drawing, practically making the intangible tangible, from borders to years or seasons.
The spin cycle of a planet lost in the cosmos with its magical orbit of just an instant like the entire essence of a form of life condemned to disappearance sooner or later. It is not that Autumn philosophizes, but he does draw on the stripped-down scenario of our reality to delimit essential meanings of humanity. Afterwards, friction with what is most human awakens closer sensations and deeper notions. And in contrast, the magical sensation of finding ourselves facing a form of parallel fiction, from the deepest prism and the depersonalization of the protagonists.
The first novel in Ali Smith's best-selling Seasonal Quartet is a meditation on an increasingly limited and exclusive world, on wealth and value, on what the harvest means. It is the first installment of his seasonal quartet: four independent books, separate but interconnected and cyclical (as are the seasons); and makes us reflect on time itself. About us? What are we made of? This is a novel about aging and time and love and the stories themselves.
Winter
It is advisable in the case of this work to immerse oneself in the rhythm and the prescribed order, in that natural cycle that precisely breaks down what we are, the mental processes that guide us, the passions redirected with our time to loss and despair. Emergency vitalism to survive the catastrophe.
Winter? Bleak. Icy wind, earth like iron, water like stone, says the old song. The shortest days, the longest nights. The trees are bare and shivering. The leaves of summer? Dead garbage. The world shrinks; the sap sinks. But winter makes things visible. And if there is ice, there will be fire.
In Ali Smith's Winter, the life force coincides with the toughest season. In this second novel from his acclaimed Seasonal Quartet, the continuation of his sensational Fall (Premi Llibreter 2019), Smith's quartet of changing novels casts a joyous look at a bleak post-truth era with a story rooted in history, memory and warmth, its taproot deep within evergreens: art, love, laughter.
World Hotel
Leaving a bit of the spider web woven by the author in her seasonal novels, we discover in this hotel the strange haven of peace that a hotel always is. Because it cannot be cozy like a home but safe from the same dangers of the street. And also room service, in the absence of a kind lover, they can always bring you breakfast in bed.
But the best thing about hotels is that we all know that something interesting, anomalous, something disconcerting is always going to happen in some of their suits, around a lost traveler, a rock star who has gone around, strange lovers or refugee criminals ...
Five women: four are alive, three are strangers, two are sisters, one is dead. And they have all passed through the hotel at some time. World Hotel welcomes us in a night of their lives. Their hopes and disappointments walk through the corridors, sheltered in the memory of that place. Each one crossing paths with the others without noticing the chance of their encounters.
Game, challenge, overflowing inventiveness, this novel is an alchemy of opposing worlds that collide to result in a modern parable about communication and indifference, and, finally, a defense of love.
