Scan barcode
A review by whatjaimereads
Winter by Ali Smith
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
I was so looking forwards to Winter by Ali Smith after having read the precursor to it last year, and it just didn’t live up to my expectations.
One of the things that I was really looking forwards to was more of Smith’s characters and their realistic relationships, but the cast in this book just didn’t quite feel fully formed for me. In Autumn I also really loved the political discussion and reflection based in the year of writing, but these themes seemed to take a little too much of a backseat in favour of The Ghost of Christmases past.
I personally really dislike the subculture within literary fiction of what I refer to as “being clever just for the sake of being clever,” it’s one of the things I disliked in Outline by Rachel Cusk, and a recurrent theme of my DNF pile. In my opinion, Winter delivers this in swathes. The first half of the book feels completely disconnected from the second, the social and political commentary is much the same, and the characters were too two-dimensional for me to properly indulge in some of their richer moments of dialogue.
It would’ve been difficult to surpass just how much I enjoyed Autumn, and I definitely anticipated that I wouldn’t enjoy Winter as much. That being said, I’m curious to see where Spring sits in my opinion after having such mixed outcomes so far, although personally, my main excitement lies in the final instalment, Summer.
One of the things that I was really looking forwards to was more of Smith’s characters and their realistic relationships, but the cast in this book just didn’t quite feel fully formed for me. In Autumn I also really loved the political discussion and reflection based in the year of writing, but these themes seemed to take a little too much of a backseat in favour of The Ghost of Christmases past.
I personally really dislike the subculture within literary fiction of what I refer to as “being clever just for the sake of being clever,” it’s one of the things I disliked in Outline by Rachel Cusk, and a recurrent theme of my DNF pile. In my opinion, Winter delivers this in swathes. The first half of the book feels completely disconnected from the second, the social and political commentary is much the same, and the characters were too two-dimensional for me to properly indulge in some of their richer moments of dialogue.
It would’ve been difficult to surpass just how much I enjoyed Autumn, and I definitely anticipated that I wouldn’t enjoy Winter as much. That being said, I’m curious to see where Spring sits in my opinion after having such mixed outcomes so far, although personally, my main excitement lies in the final instalment, Summer.