Note to self: must read some more Katherine Mansfield and Rilke. I can’t seem to help but find it a bit more exciting when Ali Smith enthuses over literary figures and forgotten female artists than when she comments on current events. However, her disturbing depiction of British immigration detention centres was an eye-opening expose and I appreciated how she included a precocious refugee girl with quasi-mythical powers in her narrative. Need more wholesome representation like this in my life! ( )

Given the similarity of their themes, I can’t help comparing ‘Spring’ with [b:Only Americans Burn in Hell|41735690|Only Americans Burn in Hell|Jarett Kobek|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1536361803l/41735690._SY75_.jpg|65121368]. Both elucidate the horrors of second modernity (as [a:Shoshana Zuboff|710768|Shoshana Zuboff|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1563298665p2/710768.jpg] calls it), including social media death threats, neo-fascist demagogues, and persecution of refugees. Both address the reader directly at least some of time; both use allegorical and somewhat fantastical elements (Kobek more than Smith). Harsh as it sounds, Smith is definitely a more skilled writer, however the most significant difference is tone. Both confront the reader with horrifying realities that we’d rather ignore, Smith by taking you into a squalid government detention centre for refugees. While Kobek’s novel leaves the reader feeling almost completely hopeless, though, Smith's does not. Her characters have a vividness, a kindness, and an empathy that is missing from Kobek’s book, apparently deleted by the shock of Donald Trump’s presidency. ‘Spring’ follows a suicidal TV director, a detention centre employee, and a mysterious young girl from one end of Britain to the other. While the narrative isn't naively optimistic, neither does it discard the power of community, kindness, and art to counter cruelty.

I found ‘Spring’ a return to the heights of [b:Autumn|28446947|Autumn (Seasonal, #1)|Ali Smith|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1456560519l/28446947._SY75_.jpg|48572278], which was a highlight of my 2017 reading. [b:Winter|34516974|Winter (Seasonal #2)|Ali Smith|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1498905680l/34516974._SY75_.jpg|55647867] was very good without being revelatory, but with ‘Spring’ Smith has once again seized the zeitgeist and played clever literary games with it to brilliant effect. She considers, amongst other things, how art interprets the world and people justify collusion with evil, how we experience grief and regret, our responses to service automation, history, and social media. For example:

But why? Richard had asked when it came to audience questions. Why are you doing this? Why go out of your way to create any of this at all?
To demonstrate what people will write or send when they contact the website, the young man said. People like feeling. They like to be asked to feel. Feeling is a very powerful thing. I’ve already been approached by numerous advertisers keen to advertise on Mourning Has Broken.
Do the people who respond to your, your, website, do they know that these people you’re displaying as having so sadly passed away are all completely made up? Richard said.
We explain that the profiles are fictional prototypes in the small print of the terms and conditions for initial log-in to the website, the man said. You have to log in if you want to send us a message. Which also means we have, as a by-product, an expanding list, it’s called a database, of personal information about our website members.
But you’re lying, someone in the audience said. You’re lying about life, about the deaths, about emotional connection.
No, I’m storytelling, the young man said. The emotional connection is true. And it’s very very valuable.
But you’re pretending it’s real, and it isn’t, the woman holding the microphone said.
It is real, the young man said. It’s real if you think it is.

On a related note, I’m still reading [b:The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power|26195941|The Age of Surveillance Capitalism The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power|Shoshana Zuboff|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1521733914l/26195941._SY75_.jpg|46170685] and can already tell it’s going to be one of those books I go on about endlessly to anyone who will listen. ‘Spring’ includes a glorious riff on the concept:

We want to narrate your life. We want to be the book of you. We want to be the only connection that matters. We want it to be inconvenient for you not to use us. We want you to look at us and as soon as you stop looking at us to feel the need to look at us again. We want you not to associate us with lynch mobs, witchhunts, and purges unless they’re your lynch mobs, witchhunts, and purges.
We want your pasts and your presents because we want your futures too.
We want all of you.

And this heartbreaking sequence:

My being ineligible makes you all the more eligible.
No worries. Happy to help.
Also you’ll notice this face resembles the drawings on the posters that tell you to report anything you think looks suspicious.
Tell the police if you see anyone who looks like me, because my face is of urgent matter to your nation.
Not at all. No problem. Glad to be of service.

‘Spring’ may have all the beauty that [b:Only Americans Burn in Hell|41735690|Only Americans Burn in Hell|Jarett Kobek|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1536361803l/41735690._SY75_.jpg|65121368] lacks, but it’s no less mercilessly insightful. The prose is bright, sharp, and full of layered subtlety. It commands your attention and forces contemplation. What an utterly brilliant novel; I absolutely recommend it. ( )

gods i hate this book. the characters dont act like actual people. it's the most pretentious thing ive ever read and overall just incomprehensible. writing notes and comments in it with a pen while reading was the only way i could get through the book, and some of my own bored comments occasionally make me smile when i read it back, and they are the only reasons why i havent burned the book ritualistically.

and you know what? it actually has somewhat interesting commentary that would have been more interesting if it didnt feel like i was being lectured by an old person that had learned a couple new and hip buzz words on facebook and decided to add them to their vocabulary

unfortunately i was unlucky enough to actually have to read this book for a class and i actually had to STUDY the bloody thing and answer questions about it in an exam. curse this book for making me suffer.

i also remember a character looking at a pile of lemons and reminiscing about how they look like boobs. i dont have anything to say about that. i guess i just found that strange. ( )

A soft four stars. I think I don't love Spring as much as I love the two previous novels in Smith's quartet, Autumn and Winter but nevertheless the author's passionate, witty, deeply angry intellect is on grand display here.

I wonder how these books will read in 30 years, when I think we as humans will look back on this time with a great deal of despair and regret. Regardless, these books are a time capsule of an upset Western world, drawing together art and politics, history and the present, naturalism and mythology, into a compelling literary strand. ( )

(6.5)I only finished this book a few days ago but am already struggling to recall the characters and storyline. Not a good sign. I found it disjointed and uneven.
I did enjoy the portrayal of the relationship between Richard, the aging film director and his longtime friendship with Paddy his scriptwriter, who was dying of cancer.
Spring is the time for hope and new beginnings and following Paddy's death, Richard walks away from his life and catches a train North. When he gets off at a random station and plans to end his life, a 13year old girl, Florence, intervenes and he becomes involved in an escapade with her and her companion Brit. Brit works as a Detention Officer at a camp for refugees. Here we learn of the unfair treatment that is being meted out to the detainees by Britain.
There is also an element of surrealism especially around the child Florence. At times I felt I didn't understand what was happening. It did manage to end on a lighter note with Richard contemplating making contact with his estranged adult daughter. ( )