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  • Winter

  • By: Ali Smith
  • Narrated by: Melody Grove
  • Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (194 ratings)
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Winter cover art

Winter

By: Ali Smith
Narrated by: Melody Grove
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Summary

Winter? Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone, so the old song goes. The shortest days, the longest nights. The trees are bare and shivering. The summer's leaves? Dead litter. The world shrinks; the sap sinks. But winter makes things visible. And if there's ice, there'll be fire. It's the season that teaches us survival.

Here comes Winter the second audiobook in Ali Smith's shape-shifting quartet of stories.

©2017 Ali Smith (P)2017 W.F. Howes Ltd

What listeners say about Winter

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

This is the Winter of my discontent!


Ali Smith has a clever mind crammed full of eclectic ideas, information, passions, allusions and word play. All very positive, but for me her second novel in her seasonal quartet (the first Autumn reviewed by me here 8/11/16) is self-indulgently over-stuffed.

The ‘story’ such as it is involves Art bringing Lux, a young woman he picked up at a bus stop, home to his mother’s huge empty house in Cornwall for Christmas after his girlfriend Charlotte has dumped him. Because there are so many issues and cryptic themes going on, the characters are incidental and never emerge as real or engaging people. Their names are all: for example, Art is all artifice and a fake nature journalist who uses Google maps to pretend he’s been places; Art’s aunt Iris called Ire is an angry political activist, and there’s Sophia and Lux… There’s a great deal about appearances, pretence, falsity, fakeness all tying up with the current moment of fake news.

The of-the-momentness of it all will please many listeners, but I found that it’s so current that the themes have already saturated the news - the refugee crisis; Trump… There is the theme of story-telling literally (stories told to children; the Christmas story) and mythologizing including misremembering or lying about the past. There are lumps of etymology (eg of ‘puddles’) which serve no purpose and aren’t arresting enough to warrant their inclusion. And there are many allusions to and word-play associated with works of literature, in particular Cymbeline and A Christmas Carol. Barbara Hepworth, Giotto, Laika the Russian space dog, Samuel Johnson (‘the opposite of Boris’)are all threaded in there too, as is the Daily Mail’s scaremongering, Greenham Common, the internet (a ‘cesspit of naivete and vitriol’) and a number of fictitious acronyms. It’s just too much so that the result is merely shallowness as she darts from one to another.

And then there’s her idiosyncratic over-use of ‘he said’ ‘she said’ in the dialogue which takes up much of the text. The narrator Melody Grove is to be congratulated on dealing with this as on the page it must be a great deal more intrusive. Generally her voice accentuates the feyness of Ali Smith. A more vigorous narration might have accentuated the more stimulating generally overwhelmed theme of Winter: burning anger with our modern world.
There IS something worthwhile in the midst of all this, but it’s all such a jumbled throw-it-all-in that it has left me with my ‘discontent’.

But Ali Smith has a huge following who will no doubt love it!

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Cold weather read which warms the heart.

Literary fiction featuring a family around Christmas times past and present. Mum, Aunt, Son and his pretend girlfriend are all quirky, amusing and unconventional as most families are which made for a fun read from start to finish. What was brilliant is just how up to date Ali Smith’s novel is, she includes references to current events, Brexit and even Grenfell Towers Fire. The Greenham Common protestors feature heavily too which was fascinating; I’d long forgotten just how significant and long lasting those protests were.

This is beautifully crafted from the moment the opening paragraph spellbinds with descriptions of winter cold. Ali Smith does an amazing job with this novel, best enjoyed I think in front of a roaring fire and dog curled in close.

Yes it’s a cold weather read, but it warms the heart.

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4 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

beautiful dreamy and full of intelligence.

beautiful and full of wonderful thoughtful prose. I loved it, the narrator is fantastic too...

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

audio versions capture the quirkiness

the images entered my dreams, mixing with my own fervid imagination. Most likely because I listened while drifting off to sleep.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Such an overtly proselytizing, disappointment

What happened?
Form defeated function?
Nothing to care about whether it’s the people, the language, the lack of..
Just made me irritated and then sad.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

What a strange book this was. Beautifully written, and fascinating characters, but I'll be honest, I'm not sure what exactly was going on. Plenty of social history snapshots, in keeping with the series. Really interesting, and surreal, read.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great weave of imagination and contemporary comment

Ali Smith’s entertaining play on words are nuggets of fun in an otherwise thought provoking and imagination stimulating book. As in real life, I’m looking forward to Spring

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Deep and layered.

I treated myself to this book as the snow fell down on my birthday. I highly recommend "Winter" by Ali Smith. I read and enjoyed "Autumn." Smith brilliantly mixes real-life issues like Brexit with a story about a quirky, dysfunctional family and an outsider pulled in to their orbit. The book feels like dreamlike, blending memories and imagination, but it's really easy to get into. A refreshing read that's both meaningful and enjoyable. After this, I'm excited for "Spring" - halfway through the seasonal series.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Beutifully written book

The descriptions are very graphic, allowing the reader to picture every little detail like they were looking at an actual image.
The story is character-driven. It introduces an array of quirky characters, representing tropes of the contemparary world, with different political views and aspirations. They are mostly interesting, but due to their quirkiness, sometimes they fall a little bit flat (the child who seems to have a natural wisdom that disappears with age or the young woman with unique, fascinating thoughts). I felt like this about the first book as well, I hope Spring will bring us some more natural characters.
The political- and cultural backgound seemed very interesting to me. As an Eastern European person, I had to look a few things up. On the same note, I wonder how this book will stand the test of time (I think it's been five years since is's release) as the message seems very much aimed towards the audiences of today.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Wandering story which leaves you cold.

not what I expected from the author. shallow characters who bump off eachother in unrealistic ways. plus random stuff perhaps exploring mental health issues but not clear on the subject.

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