Whether the characters are activists or children, politics fills the air.
Others are national: a diminished and soured UK. Some losses are personal: parents, lovers or friends. Their plots are about parents and children at odds families tied to the past and how middle-class hopes have changed in the course of the past five years. The first of them was Autumn (2016) now Summer completes the set. These books have been written at speed, in response to real-world events since 2015: the rise of Trump, the Scottish referendum and, above all, the Brexit vote. When intended as a slight, this implies that, whatever their substance, they’re playing a suspect hand.īut while her recent “seasonal quartet” may seem to pun and twist, below the surface it is struck with angst.
This has earned them the label “postmodern” – especially in America – which is lazy-speak for “experimental”, but also “shifty”, even “meta”: in short, doing things while querying the doing. They’re rife with wordplay, shifts in time, switches in viewpoint and narrative voice. The story is over, and was fun while it lasted, but it still isn’t quite resolved.Īli Smith’s novels appear to be playful. When you close the covers, it haunts you: something was amiss. A skilful novelist can keep an emotion present but half-hidden. It doesn’t flow across everyone’s face, nor through their writing style.
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