A toast to brotherhood: Summer, by Ali Smith, reviewed
The concluding novel of Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet is a family affair. Her intergenerational group of seeming strangers from the past three novels find themselves flung together at the eroding eastern edge of England. Daniel Gluck, our centenarian from Autumn, now 104, has been moved out of his care home (thank God, given that we know what’s coming — this is February 2020) and into Elisabeth’s mother’s house in Suffolk. There are some fresh faces too. Sacha and Robert are two children who tag along with Charlotte and Arthur (whom we came across in Winter) to meet him. The children’s parents voted differently in 2016, so now their dad lives
