For one summer, Ali Smith puts Brighton at the center of the world

A rotten time

Finally, one of Camus’ best quotes is, “au environment of WinterI Found an Invincible Summer in Me”, taken from summer, Not all of Ali Smith’s characters share this view. In summer, Translated into French by Laetitia Devaux, she portrays Robert Greenlaw, a young man with dismal predictions: “Leave the summer, it’s never as good as you think, usually it’s a rotten one, and it’s getting hotter now. A rotten season, too much to do.” In the sun, the leaves hang on the trees and turn a hideous brown within a week, smell like feces and vomit, garbage cans stink of spoiled milk, and it’s like being stuck in a puddle and cycling behind a garbage truck moving very slowly down a very narrow street.

We often wonder how books are born: is it a story, an image, a haunting? Summer, he is the last harvest of a tetralogy undertaken by the author between 2016 and 2020. One day, during a discussion with his editor, he realizes that it is technically possible to reduce the time normally allotted to a manuscript for printing a book. This information allows her to reconsider her idea of ​​the novel’s contemporaneity. Ali Smith, distinguished for its formal experiments, then set out to write a series in which the story’s time follows as closely as possible the time of the events it echoes.

Donald Trump was elected

And what time: in June 2016, the year he published it autumn, the referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union received 51.89% of the vote in favor of Brexit; In November of the same year, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. Let’s follow Winter (2018) and spring (2019) In May 2020, as Australia burns and Antarctica melts and the entire planet breathes in pain under surgical masks, George Floyd suffocates under a police officer’s knee. Two months later, Ali Smith publishes Summer In England.

You enter this novel like waking up one morning to discover the weather has changed: captured by something new or unusual floating in the atmosphere. High school student Sacha Greenlaw does her homework. Her attention was torn between the television as her brother hid the remote control, the Facebook news feed, and the computer where she was writing. of history.”

Personal development

Around her, her mother Grace flutters, repeating this sentence like a mantra – “Will I become the heroine of my own life?” — we don’t know if it’s from a pattern of personal growth or whether this former actress drew from a Shakespearean play she performed in the past, a formative summer.

Eighty years ago, Hannah—not Hannah Arendt, as she appears in the novel, but Hannah Kluck—makes Grace’s phrase her own—at her expense. A German Jew, hunted by the Nazis and thinking she is safe as a refugee in France, she leaves her little girl in Nice and joins the resistance. In moments of depression, she remembers her childhood, her days at the circus with her brother Daniel. Born in England, he visited her every summer and that season became a symbol of brotherhood. For his part, Daniel, because he is half German, becomes a “foreign enemy” in his country. Arrested, he spent part of the war in an internment camp.

On Swifts Road

At a time when political, administrative and health borders were closing in the UK, Ali Smith shaped what hospitality meant. Young environmentalist Sasha Greenlaw, ‘screaming in her sleep from visions of a world on fire’, writes letters to a detained refugee, ‘who has been here for over six weeks in a container. […] graduate in microbiology” but, in England, started by “wrapping fridges with plastic film in a warehouse”. She tells him about the migratory journey of swifts, which cover 22,000 kilometers each year. In Brighton, where she lives with her family, they first see her return from Africa: “the arrival of the swifts. Departure also marks the beginning and end of summer.” But if swifts continue to perish under the effects of climate change, what will happen to the seasons and Sasha’s world?

read more: Jonathan Coe: ‘Comedy and politics have an unhealthy relationship in the UK’

Ali Smith’s characters are troubled by the times they pass through. Often, his readers are also confused by the author’s pirouettes. In searching for her story, in having the conversations, in the ellipse she provides for herself, she seems scattered. However, from the second half of the book, different tracks unfold, connections are woven – Summer Finds traces of his story. Laetitia Devaux, who has been translating her work for twenty years, confirms this feeling: “Ali Smith is very experimental with language, but her experiments are very successful. Her formal games respond to her unique way of seeing the world. She is always one step ahead of others, but she is right. “

No fairy tales

The author does not hesitate to disrupt the natural order of his novel’s scenes by slipping in more or less obvious references to external events that place him on a platform of narrative equality, reminding us that we are the ones who recreate the effect. Constantly dependent on current events and the society around us.

Although the four volumes of the tetralogy are said to be read independently of each other, some writings are includedsummer, Reassembled for this final work, the new reader lacks sufficient context. Nevertheless, brought together for a road trip, their conversations help propel the story towards its climax. They talk about heroism – “The modern meaning of the word hero is to shine a spotlight on what is worth seeing” –, art – “it may be – it may be, art. Something that marks you without knowing why” – or architecture – “summer. It is the beam that supports the entire structure. Floor, ceiling, or even both.

In this flood of exchange, images, poetry sequences, sunbathing are unleashed. They sharpen the mind, stir the conscience, and finally, “Summer is not a fairy tale. There is no happy story without darkness”, and only the training of our humanity can prevent us from drowning in it.

Ali Smith, “Summer”. The novel translated by Laetitia Devaux, ed. Grosset, 360 p.