by Ali Smith, 2019
Like with Winter, I was so excited to get to the next installment in the Seasonal Quartet that I made a note in my calendar to remind me to put it on hold at the library on the day of its release. And, like with Winter, I was once again amazed by Smith’s ability to weave the consequences of political action, or lack thereof, into the lives of everyday people. Through this series, Smith has shown how the political dogma that travels across our 24-hour news channels is, for many people, real life, and Spring is no exception in its focus on England’s treatment of immigrants and refugees. “Now what we don’t want is Facts,” the book opens, and Smith proves this statement to be one that accurately represents our times.
Spring is a story told across two timelines. One is through television director Richard Lease, who has lost the love of his life, writer Paddy Heal. He is struggling to complete her last project, a movie about the writers Katherine Mansfield and Rainer Maria Rilke that has gone from a biopic to a steamy period romance. We meet him standing on a train platform, grieving and bereft of purpose, as he lays his body down on the tracks. He waits for time to stop, until young mixed-race girl tells him that she really needs him not to do that. This is our second timeline, one involving said twelve-year-old girl, Florence, and Brittany, a Detainee Custody Officer at an Immigration Removal Center. Brit follows Florence when she spies her on a different train platform one day, suspicious that she is the one who mysteriously made her way into the Center to have all of the bathrooms deep-cleaned. Florence has something of a hypnotic ability about her, as rumors fly that she has entered similar facilities in the past and achieved similar results. No one quite knows what her motivations are, but through the book we start to unravel the machinations of Florence’s chaotic good and how it is deeply connected to her being.
One of the very small issues I have with this Quartet is one of ignorance on my part. Not being in England, and not really following the news myself, I don’t always understand the events to which Smith makes reference, and I found myself looking up some of the political debacles that Paddy condemns in her conversations with Richard. However, much of what is plaguing the country is all too familiar, and Smith’s stark criticism could easily be applied to the United States as well. When describing what Brit has learned during her first two weeks at the Center, she writes about a man one of her coworkers has known since primary school. Upon learning that he would be deported to Ghana, he moans, “I don’t know nothing about Ghana. I never been to Ghana. I don’t even know where Ghana is.” Another “deet”–their name for the detainees–tells Brit that “I’ve done three years in here for the crime of being a migrant…If you’re keeping people here this long you may as well let us do something. We could take a degree. Do a useful thing.” When Brit asks Florence how she manages to sneak into places, she responds that “Sometimes I am invisible….People can look right through me. Certain white people in particular can look right through young people and also black and mixed race people like we aren’t here.” And when Florence has the center’s manager at her disposal, she questions why the detainees are kept like criminals and insists on asking “Is migrating to another country because you need help actually a crime?”
Amidst DACA scrutiny, Muslim bans, and fear-mongering about “The Wall,” such pushing against the righteousness of immigration laws should be familiar to many Americans, for we, too, have a tendency to treat those who felt a need to leave their home countries as if they have no home to be found here. While Smith may reference British-specific events, her concerns are global ones, human ones, and I can’t imagine a reader not being moved by the injustices she addresses. Like both Autumn and Winter, Spring is a book that can be read on its own, with its focus on the pressing issues of the last few years. Although it has ties to the other books, there’s no real disadvantage to reading them out of order. They are each relevant and timely, and they reveal much of the darker political, societal, and cultural beliefs that both of our countries hold.
The Thousand Book Project 