Summer: A Novel [Paperback]

The fourth novel in the Seasonal Quartet by Man Booker Prize Finalist Ali Smith is “a prose poem in praise of memory, forgiveness, getting the joke, and seizing the moment” (The New York Times).

In the present, Sacha knows the world’s in trouble. Her brother Robert just is trouble. Their mother and father are having trouble. Meanwhile, the world’s in meltdown­—and the real meltdown hasn’t even started yet. In the past, a lovely summer. A different brother and sister know they’re living on borrowed time.

This is a story about people on the brink of change. They’re family, but they think they’re strangers. So: Where does family begin? And what do people who think they’ve got nothing in common have in common?

Summer.A Best Book of the Year: NPR • The Guardian • Kirkus Reviews

Winner of the Orwell Prize for Fiction

“Sublime. . . . Smith has completed what must be considered both one of modern fiction's most elusive and most important undertakings. . . . No novelist has come closer to describing the particular sad informed madness of our times.” 
—The Boston Globe

“A prose poem in praise of memory, forgiveness, getting the joke and seizing the moment.” 
—The New York Times

“Rich with references, characters quick to share stories about artists and their work, and the misfits and heroes of history, Summer is more than a perennial season.l4