Books like Spring

With Ali Smith's final volume "Summer" due this week - I hope (for those who want to read Summer without revisiting the first three) that this serves as a valuable resource:--------------------------------------------------------------------The third of Ali’s Smith’s seasonal quartet after Autumn and Winter. A book I started at the beginning of Spring in the UK and finished 24 hours later at the beginning of Autumn in Australia. Interestingly at one point, Richard remembers speaking in the past to his (then) future wife, who is crying over the end of Spring \ And if you die before me, he says, I will spend all the time I’m alive and not with you negotiating the various time differences across the world so that I can spend as much time as a man possibly can on this planet in springtime’\ . I found this quote interesting - and somewhat ironical for two reasons: on a personal level, in that I contrived, as noted above, when reading this book to negotiate time differences to escape the onset of Spring and instead spend time in Autumn; On a general level, because in 2018 as covered in Spring, Richard is alive and not with his wife - however rather than him finding her there, we as the reader realise she is in fact hiding in the pages of Autumn as Wendy Demand. SA4AAll of the books feature the firm SA4A (Smith, Ali, Quartet, Autumn) which has served as a symbol of the threat of faceless and almost unknown multinationals. In Autumn, we see SA4A as a quasi-police private security firm, in Winter Art works for their entertainments division to enforce copyright on emerging artists. In Spring book Britanny works for them at a UK Immigration Removal Centre.But that is far from the only element linking the books. These are common elements I have spotted. Cover ArtworkA wrap around cover featuring a David Hockney picture of a seasonal tunnel of trees: respectively: Autumn - “Early November Tunnel”, Winter - “Winter Tunnel with Snow” and Spring“Late Spring Tunnel”Endpaper artworkEndpaper artwork by a key female artist featured in the book: Autumn - Pauline Boty’s “The Only Blonde in the World”; Winter - Barbara Hepworth “Winter Solstice” and Spring - Tacita Dean’s “Why Cloud”Past DecadesA concentration on the modern day resonances of a historic 20th Century decade: Autumn - 1960s, Winter - 1980s, Spring - 1920s. Note that the 1920s link for Spring is related to Katherine Mansfield (who seems to function as a second female artist here alongside Tacita Dean - the two together forming more of the role played by a single artist in the two previous books)Contemporary eventsOf course the key idea of the Quartet is the coverage of immediately contemporary events woven through the text - but each book has a concentration on key overarching themes: Autumn - the Brexit vote, Winter - Trump's election, Spring - the issue of borders (both the Irish border and those erected to deter migrations)A link between past political actions from the crucial decade and contemporary events This was a crucial part of the concept of seasonality that Smith set out to explore when she commenced the quartet \ the concept that our real energy, our real history, is cyclic in continuance and at core, rather than consecutive and how closely to contemporaneousness a finished book might be able to be in the world, and yet how it could also be, all through, very much about stratified, cyclic time\ In Autumn very deliberate parallels are drawn between the Profumo scandal and the Brexit vote – the concept of the lies of those in power. 

In Winter, the environmental and climate-change activism of Charlotte (Art’s ex-girlfriend) and the refugee involvement of the modern day Iris are linked directly to the Silent-Spring inspired environmental activism of the commune where Iris lives many years before and her role in the Greenham Common protests. In Spring the Irish border complications to the Brexit issue are linked to the death of Michael Collins in 1922. 
\ Think about it .. Ireland in uproar. Brand new union. Brand new border. Brand new ancient Irish unrest. Don’t tell me this isn’t relevant all over again in its brand new same old way.\ 
Tragic deathA female artist who died tragically (Autumn - Boty of cancer, Winter - Hepworth of a fire in her studio, Spring - Mansfield of TB) : that death being important to Paddy persuading Richard to reject the play he is being asked to Direct due to its historical inaccuracy.CollectionsA male character with a past link to that artist or who collected that art:Autumn Daniel's close relation to Pauline Boty (albeit he actually owns and just before the book, then sells a Hepworth); Winter - Art’s father (who of course is Daniel)'s love of Barbara Hepworth; Spring - the Collected works of Katherine Mansfield which Paddy leaves Richard in her will. 
Art influencing charactersActual works of art of the artist figuring in the book and sparking a character’s imagination: In Autumn Elisabeth looks at a book of Boty’s paintings; in Winter Art’s mother views a Hepworth sculpture (I believe “Nesting Stones”) owned by his father; in Spring Richard visits a gallery to view Dean’s work. 
The influence of the art as a metaphor for the QuartetThe character’s reaction to the art serving as a very deliberate metaphor for what Smith is trying to do in her quartet. 
In Autumn, Elisabeth comments on one of Boty’s paintings \ The cow parsley. The painted flowers. Boty’s sheer unadulterated reds in the re-image-ing of the image. Put it together and what have you got? Anything useful? \ Which echoes a question Smith asked of herself in an interview as she started work on the concept \ We'll see what happens. I have no idea how the reality will meet the conception. I'm looking forward to finding out\ 
In Winter, Sophia comments of the Hepworth sculpture\ It makes you walk around it, it makes you look through it from different sides, see different things from different positions. It’s also like seeing inside and outside something at once \ which is a perfect metaphor for how Smith's writing forces us to examine our worldIn Spring, Richard experiences something of an epiphany viewing Tacita Dean’s cloud pictures: \ They’d made space to breathe possible, up against something breathtaking. After them, the real clouds above London looked different, like they were something you could read as breathing space. This made something happen too to the buildings below them, the traffic, the ways in which people were passing each other in the street, all of it part of a structure that didn’t know it was a structure, but was one all the same.\ Again this seems a metaphor for the more hopeful elements emerging in Smith’s Spring - trying to gives us space away from the clouds which seem to be oppressing our society and help us to see the bigger picture and our fundamental interconnectedness. Time ContainersWhen discussing the quartet, Smith commented \ But we're time-containers, we hold all our diachrony, our pasts and our futures (and also the pasts and futures of all the people who made us and who in turn we'll help to make) in every one of our consecutive moments / minutes / days / years \ 

In Autumn this concept was captured particularly in Daniel’s dreams and his memories of his fleeing from Nazi Germany and of his brilliant sister killed in the holocaust. 
In Winter the concept is even more explicit when discussing Art’s visions of the floating coastline, Lux explains what she calls her own coastline. In Spring the idea is I think best captured in the almost interminable 11.29 on the railway platform in Kingussie as Richard reflects on much of his life \ Is a single minute really this long. Is the clock that’s broken the one inside him\ Rhythmic chaptersAn rhythmical chapter, clearly designed to be read aloud: Autumn - the famous “All across the country …” chapter which Smith seemed to use in most of her readings; Winter the opening “ ….. is dead” chapter; Spring has two We Want ..” chapters (one opening and the other voiced by technology giants)ShakespeareA key link to a main Shakespeare plays (as well as an opening and seasonally linked Shakespearean Epigraphs and links to other plays). The main plays are all one of Shakespeare's late romances: Autumn - The Tempest, Winter Cymbeline, Spring – Pericles. (leaving only "The Winter's Tale.") DickensA key link to a Dickens work: Autumn – A Tale of Two Cities, Winter – A Christmas Carol; Spring - The Story of Richard DoubledickDickens Opening LinesAutumn starts: "It was the worst of times, it was the worst of time"A Tale of Two Cities starts "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"Winter starts "God was dead: to begin with"A Christmas Carol starts: "Marley was dead, to begin with" Spring starts "Now what we don't want is facts"Hard Times starts "NOW, what I want is, Facts"TV relationshipsSet alongside the literary references, relationships with TV stars from older years: In Autumn Wendy participates in a game show and forms a relationship with her minor celebrity participant (a former child TV star); in Winter Art’s step-father was a sitcom star; In Spring Richard, is an ex- Play for Today Director for TV and meets Paddy, his muse, confidant, closest friend and one-time (actually make that a double - two-time) lover through their collaboration as Director and writer.Reappearing, related charactersDaniel Gluck, one of the two key characters of Autumn reappears as an earlier lover of a character in subsequent books - Sophie in Winter and Paddy in Spring - albeit with a different name in the latter (mistakenly identified as Andy). And, as hinted above, we see in Spring the other main character of Autumn emerging as Richard's daughter.Dysfunctional parent/child relationshipsIn Autumn - Elisabeth and her mother (as well as her missing father, whose identity we only find out in Spring. In Winter not just Art and Sophia, but between Sophia and her own father. In Spring Richard and his missing daughterA Love of and interest in Charlie ChaplinBoth his work and his own life, introduced in each book by Daniel but then passed on in turn to other characters by those who Daniel infused with his love for ChaplinTrees as a recurring image throughout the bookA delight in wordplay and punningNote that play is a fundamental concept to Ali Smith. She remarked at a book event at Foyles that it is important that dramas are called plays, that playfulness and imagination are fundamental to her world view, and that she once heard a comment (which she found very true) that if you watch a group of young animals (for example kittens), if one of the them is not playing it probably is a sign that the animal will not survive for long.Character’s names which form part of that punningArt in Winter being matched by Brit in Spring, as well as Florence and her interaction with the immigration Machine (with perhaps Elisabeth’s surname Demand being the Autumn equivalent)Non-native punnersA character who delights in wordplay and expanding other character’s appreciation of language, ironically (but presumably very deliberately given the immigration and Brexit ideas running through the books) in each cases a non-native English speaker.In Autumn, Daniel broadens the language of the young Elisabeth; in Winter Lux has a great grasp of English language and literature and her own name serves as a pun at one stage Lux/Lexiography; In Spring the character is Florence. 
 The importance of postcardsA postcard from Daniel to Sophie forms a key link between Autumn and Winter: In Spring postcards form a link between Richard and Paddy (and his imaginary daughter) and feature in the stories of Mansfield and Rilke as retold by Paddy. In Richard’s letter to the screenwriter Terp (a failed attempt to dissuade Terp from adapting the gentle, literary novel “April” about the near meeting of Mansfield and Rilke in Switzerland in 1922, into a preposterous bonk-buster, he proposes changing the script to a series of postcards, observing ”Our lives .. often have what we might call a postcard nature” Eduardo BoubatAn early reference (within the first ten pages) to Eduardo Boubat’s “petite fille aux feuilles mortes jardin du Luxembourg Paris 1946. In Autumn Daniel remembers the postcard of it that he bought in Paris in the 1980s. In Winter, Sophie - the recipient we later realise of the postcard is reminded of the postcard by the disembodied head she starts seeingIn Spring, a disembodied voice (perhaps taken, as we later realise is much of the book, from Florence’s Hot Air book) says “I’m the child who’s been buried in leaves” with a later reference to “children with clothes as ragged as suits of old leaves”. The symbolism of fences and commons The image that Ali Smith first thought of when she envisaged the Seasonal quartet was a fence - and as commented in my opening remarks the key for Ali Smith throughout this quartet was to emphasise that "nothing is not connected" and that "division is a lie"In Autumn Elisabeth’s mother is shocked by a fence erected on a common near her home (the fence serving a metaphor for Brexit); In Winter Iris chains herself to a fence at the very start of the Greenham Commons protests. In Spring the fences are in the Immigration centre and the replacement of the commons by enclosures was the first stage of the Highland clearances which feature in the novel.