Winter

　　Ali Smith季節四部曲系列第二集
　　
　　冬季。陰鬱、蒼涼的季節，寒風刺骨。

　　橫亙在一對關係降到冰點的姊妹間，長達近三十年的沉默，也猶如嚴冬中冰凍的土地和海洋，難以消融。然而隨著2016年的聖誕節來臨，一切似乎將有改變。

　　60多歲的Sophia曾是實業家，總是將工作置於家庭之前，如今已經退休，住在康瓦爾一處有15多個房間的宅邸中，而她的姊姊Iris，則是一名終身的社運份子，最近才剛剛結束在希臘救援難民的行動，回到家鄉。

　　Sophia的兒子Arthur以作家身分自居，不久前剛和情人分手──那個人發了一些令他難堪的推文，攻擊了他的部落格「Art in Nature」。不想和母親解釋自己已恢復單身，Arthur於是花錢聘僱在公車站偶遇的克羅埃西亞女同性戀Lux，讓她假扮成自己的女友，和他一起回到康瓦爾過聖誕節。

　　這四個人帶著他們各自的艱難課題，在Sophia的大房子裡相聚。在短短幾天共處的時光中，兩個老婦人不停回看她們對彼此的憎惡的來源──個性、政治立場、對生活的選擇等等，並重新發現了深藏在其下的情感。

　　儘管此系列已出版的兩本書可以做為各自獨立的作品來閱讀，但實際上Smith安排了一些連結，包含兩個故事所牽涉到的歷史及現代事件等等。在第二部曲中，Smith將現在的敘述與閃現的回憶交織，延續《Autumn》關於時間的探討以及對社會脈動的關心，透過這個根植於歷史和記憶的故事，以溫暖、睿智、愉快而堅定的眼光，審視了我們身處的後真相時代。（文/博客來編譯）
　　
　　The second novel in the Man Booker Prize–nominated author’s Seasonal cycle; the much-anticipated follow-up to Autumn （a New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Financial Times, The Guardian, Southern Living, and Kirkus Reviews best book of the year）。
　　
　　Winter. Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone, so the old song goes. And now Art’s mother is seeing things. Come to think of it, Art’s seeing things himself.
　　
　　When four people, strangers and family, converge on a fifteen-bedroom house in Cornwall for Christmas, will there be enough room for everyone?
　　
　　Winter. It makes things visible. Ali Smith’s shapeshifting Winter casts a warm, wise, merry and uncompromising eye over a post-truth era in a story rooted in history and memory and with a taproot deep in the evergreens, art and love.
　　
　　Review
　　
　　“Stunning prose. . . . often funny, sometimes wistful, suggesting a garrulous old friend riffing on a gripe or sharing an anecdote. Smith knits together the present-time narrative and many flashbacks to reveal secrets, ironies, old loves, and the unfolding lives enriched by them. A sprightly, digressive, intriguing fandango on life and time.”—Kirkus Reviews （starred）
　　
　　“A capacious, generous shapeshifter of a novel . . . [A] book with Christmas at its heart, in all its familiarity and estrangement: about time, and out of time, like the festival itself.”—The Guardian （The Best Fiction of 2017）
　　
　　“This second installment in Smith’s seasonal quartet combines captivating storytelling with a timely focus on social issues. Enthusiastically recommended; we’re now eagerly awaiting Spring.”—Library Journal （starred review）
　　
　　“[There are] glimmers of life, laughter and love. . . . Smith threads passages of delicately observed natural beauty throughout the ephemera. She often lets the language itself lead her （hence her love of puns）， and the intricate narrative rolls back and forth smoothly in time.”—The Times Literary Supplement （London）
　　
　　“Winter is typical of the Scottish writer’s heart-starting （and often heart-stopping） fiction­: all spark, lark and jumper-lead, playful, witty and gloriously challenging. . . . Balancing delicious and irreverent playfulness with deep seriousness, Smith’s engineering of tone and mode is one of many facets of the novel’s appeal. —The Australian
　　
　　“Smith's deceptively unshowy writing evokes every shade of emotion. . . . Themes and experiences entangle, making Winter a dense, satisfying read. . . . It's to Smith's credit that Winter works on a number of levels, from a straightforward, quotidian tale about a fractured family to a deeper story packed with symbolism and highbrow literary references: a subtle meditation on loneliness, loss and aging in uncertain times.”—The Irish Independent
　　
　　“The novel is lucid and tightly constructed. . . . [I]ts disparate strands converge tautly to convey and deepen Smith’s powerful political message. . . . This wintry spirit of benevolence animates Smith’s vision of a world where empathy overrides divisions and where animosity can melt like snow. . . . Smith’s voice, so wise and joyful, is the perfect antidote to troubled times: raw and bitter in the face of injustice, yet always alive to hope.”—New Statesman
　　
　　“Smith combines her state-of-the-moment themes with a preoccupation for how to behave in a meaningful way in an increasingly technocratic world—and she does so with an effervescent seriousness none of her peers can match.”—Daily Mail
　　
　　“A novel of great ferocity, tenderness, righteous anger and generosity of spirit that you feel Dickens would have recognised . . . Winter is at its most luminously beautiful when the news fades and merges with recent and ancient history, a reminder that everything is cyclical. There is forgiveness here, and song, and comic resolution of sorts, but the abiding image is of the tenacity of nature and light.”—The Observer （London）
　　
　　“Smith has both a telescopic and a microscopic eye. . . . Her many-layered artistry softens rage or sorrow. . . If Ali Smith’s four quartets in, and about, time do not endure to rank among the most original, consoling and inspiring of artistic responses to ‘this mad and bitter mess’ of the present, then we will have plunged into an even bleaker midwinter than people often fear.”—Financial Times
　　
　　“One of Britain’s most important novelists . . . Winter is narrated with Smith’s customary stylistic brio . . . punctuated with clever word play . . . Heartwarming.”—The Irish Times
　　
　　“Smith’s prose—that trademark mischievous wit and wordplay, a joyful reminder of the most basic, elemental delights of reading—makes us see things differently . . . The entire book is testament to the miraculous powers of the creative arts . . . Winter firmly acknowledges the power of stories. Infused with some much needed humour, happiness and hope.”—The Independent （London）
　　
　　“Calm, cool and consoling. . . . But still a sparkler. . . . [A] novel of visions, memories and family relationships.”—The Spectator
　　
　　“A novel which, in its very inclusiveness, associative joy, and unrestricted movement, proposes other kinds of vision . . . [A]stonishingly fertile and free . . . [Smith] finds life stubbornly shining in the evergreens . . . told in a voice that is Dickensian in its fluency and mobile empathy . . .  Leaping, laughing, sad, generous and winter-wise, this is a thing of grace.”—The Guardian
　　
　　“Combines comedy with social criticism, playfulness with political indictment . . . Structurally, the book is intricate: a collage of flashbacks, flash-forwards and interior monologues . . . Smith is a self-consciously aesthetic writer who also has strong political convictions.”—The Sunday Times （London）
　　
　　“If Ali Smith’s four quartets in, and about, time do not endure to rank among the most original, consoling and inspiring of artistic responses to 'this mad and bitter mess' of the present, then we will have plunged into an even bleaker midwinter than people often fear.” —Financial Times
　　
　　“Refracted through the lens of a broken family in a broken home, Smith’s vision is almost without redemption, but not quite; beneath the frozen ground, some hope exists.”—The Times （London）
　　
　　“a novel of great ferocity, tenderness, righteous anger and generosity of spirit . . . Winter is at its most luminously beautiful when the news fades and merges with recent and ancient history, a reminder that everything is cyclical. There is forgiveness here, and song, and comic resolution of sorts, but the abiding image is of the tenacity of nature and light.”—The Observer
　　
　　“（Smith） is cresting across the contemporary in a manner few novelists can manage. . . . Winter is a novel in which the cold also reveals clarity. Things crystallize. They become piercing and numbing at the same time. It is a book about being wintry in the sense of supercilious and hibernal, in its sense of wanting to shut the world out. The characters have to deal with both impulses, and deal with them in different ways. But the end result is a book that makes one think, and thinky books are rare as hen’s teeth these days.”—The Scotsman