Review of the Day: Spring by Ali Smith

Spring is the third book in Smith’s seasonal quartet and tells the story of Britt, an immigration detention officer and her encounter with Florence, a rather remarkable 12 year old girl who has the ability to enter high security areas simply by asking questions. Florence, is, without a doubt a metaphor for the spirit of empathy in a time of right wing nativism in the United Kingdom. For example:

I look at Trump now, I see them all, the new world tyrants, all the leaders of the packs, the racists, the white supremacists, the new crusader rabblerousers holding forth, the thugs all across the world, and what I think is, all that too too solid flesh. It’ll melt away, like snow in May pgs 70-1).

The topic of refugees comes up often.

We move from one invisibility to another. I had no rights. I still have no rights. I carried fear on my shoulders all the way across the world to this country you call yours. I still carry the fear on my shoulders. Now I see it like this. Fear is one of my belongings. Fear will always be a part of any belonging, anywhere, that I ever do, for the rest of my life. I fought hard, to get here to your country. And the first thing you did when I arrived was hand me a letter saying, Welcome to a country in which you are not welcome. You are now a designated unwelcome person with whom we will do as we please. Never mind the hundred battles I’d fought to get here. This was the lowest time for my soul. And that’s the very time at which my battle really began. But I’ve been lucky (p. 271).

Smith seems to cover a great many subjects in such a small book, including the poetry of Rilke.

…he types in…R. M. Rilke followed by the word postcard. Something do. A series of sites comes up … a big reason R. M. Rilke even wrote one of his great works at all, a set of sonnets dedicated to Orpheus, in that turret in 1922, was that a lover of his had chanced to tack a postcard with a renaissance picture of the musician Orpheus on it to one of the walls in his writing room (p. 95).

This is an extraordinary book.

kindle and Audible audiobook. 320 pgs. 17 March 2026