They stood under a night sky in a car park where Einstein himself may possibly once stood and looked up at the lit pinpoints in the dark that meant the ancient and original and already dead stars.Īnother example is that of early photographs with long exposures, where anything that moved would disappear from the photo, and thus, not be known to exist by the later viewer. On the last page, stars that we can see are just as meaningful even if they have since ceased to exist: Seeing and not-seeing have a similar connection with existence in Summer. In How to be both, art is this message from the past, the idea of frescos – where paintings can be hidden below layers of wall – used to explore the idea of whether art needs to be seen for the existence of the artist to be confirmed. The second idea revisited from How to be both was that of leaving something behind to prove, after you die, that you existed. In Summer, not only is Robert mistaken for Daniel’s long-dead sister Hannah, but he becomes Hannah within the narration, the names and pronouns shifting in a move which defies not just gender but – fitting with the prevalence of Einstein in the text – time and space. One revisited theme was the blurred line between male and female, seen in the earlier novel both in the cross-dressing Renaissance artist known as Francesco del Cossa and when the ‘ghost’ of this artist sees the present day George and believes her to be a boy because she is wearing trousers. However, I additionally noticed the revisiting of several ideas from Smith’s 2014 novel, How to be both my favourite of all her books, and the one which most immediately precedes the Seasonal Quartet. For a full breakdown of the recurring features of the Seasonal Quartet, see Grumble’s Yard’s review on Goodreads – one of my favourite reviewers, who enjoyed tracking all the patterns through this quartet.

Links between characters from different novels became apparent, threads were tied together, recurring motifs chimed a fourth time. In this fourth and final volume, connections across the series became solid rather than subtle. The contemporary-est of contemporary novels, they have featured current events often of only a month or two before publication, mixed in with stories about inter-connected families and friends, about female artists through the decades, about nature changing through the seasons. It’s quite sad that this series has come to an end. Because there’s no merry tale without the darkness.

Summer by ali smith