Review of the Day: Winter by Ali Smith

Ali Smith’s novel begins:

God was dead: to begin with.

It goes on:

And romance was dead. Chivalry was dead. Poetry, the novel, painting, they were all dead, and art was dead. Theatre and cinema were both dead. Literature was dead. The book was dead. Modernism, postmodernism, realism and surrealism were all dead. Jazz was dead, pop music, disco, rap, classical music, dead. Culture was dead. Decency, society, family values were dead. The past was dead. History was dead. The welfare state was dead. Politics was dead. Democracy was dead. Communism, fascism, neoliberalism, capitalism, all dead, and marxism, dead, feminism, also dead. Political correctness, dead. Racism was dead. Religion was dead. Thought was dead. Hope was dead. Truth and fiction were both dead. The media was dead. The internet was dead. Twitter, instagram, facebook, google, dead. 

There are a lot of ideas in this book: Brexit, Samuel Johnson, Boris Johnson, Trump, art, especially the sculptor Barbara Hepworth. 

…Hepworth, I think, puts the holes through what she makes, because she wants people to think about exactly what you just said, time, and ancient things, but also because she really just wants them to want to touch what she makes, you know, to be reminded about things that are quite physical, sensory, immediate, he says. … He tells her the artist said that she was tired of faces and of dramas and that she wanted a universal language. One where the world itself speaks, he says, not just us on the surface arguing the toss in all the different languages all across it (p. 272-3).

Smith reminds me of the late but very much still reading Iris Murdoch with her ability to mix big philosophical ideas with clever observations of the pedestrian. I will confess that I did not always understand what I was reading, but I definitely will read more Ali Smith.

kindle and Audible audiobook. 336 pgs. 5 March 2026