Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time
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Artful – Ali Smith (2012)

Artful by Ali Smith

January 12, 2021 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

In an essay and kind of novel form, Ali Smith writes about a writer who begins seeing the ghost of her dead partner, who appears in spectre-form, performing actions, sometimes saying words, and bringing up an untold number of memories. Challenging these images too is the relatively short amount of time that relationship lasted before her partner’s death. This is a meditative and mourning book is beautifully evocative about life, death, what form and presence another takes in our life, and about those traces. It’s […]

Filed Under: Non-Fiction Tagged With: ali smith, artful

vel veeter's CBR13 Review No:20 · Genres: Non-Fiction · Tags: ali smith, artful ·
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Everybody said: so? As in so what?

Summer by Ali Smith

September 17, 2020 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

The closing volume of the Seasons Quarter by Ali Smith. Arguably, this is the best or at least most impressive of the books, but I will get to that. The books are not sequels, so you can read them in any order. Instead, each novel focuses on a season (and things attached to that season) and generally try to capture the current moment (as of publication) while also trying to place things within broader contexts or connected thematic moments. So in this book, the absolute […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: ali smith, summer

vel veeter's CBR12 Review No:498 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: ali smith, summer ·
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· 0 Comments

The truth is kind of regardless.

Spring by Ali Smith

July 27, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

Much like the two previous novels in this series, Ali Smith’s Spring is a novel of the times. But more than simply being a story told within our zeitgeist, there’s a lot going on here. While the first, Autumn, spent a lot of time thinking about Brexit, this novel moves into the world of Trump, without mentioning Trump more than a few times. The focus is less about the world itself so much as the chaos, uncertainty, and disruption we feel (irrespective of whether or […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: ali smith, spring

vel veeter's CBR11 Review No:431 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: ali smith, spring ·
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That’s one of the things stories and books can do, they can make more than one time possible at once.

June 12, 2018 by vel veeter 2 Comments

I was wondering going into this novel whether or not it was a continuation of the characters and stories of Autumn. And it isn’t. Autumn is the first of the Ali Smith novels I have really enjoyed. I have maintained the ideas that a)she’s a very good writer, b) she’s going to be considerably important in years to come, c) I am deeply interested in her work, and d) she will win a Booker Prize before too long. Perhaps this is it. Autumn was better […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: ali smith, winter

vel veeter's CBR10 Review No:208 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: ali smith, winter ·
Rating:
· 2 Comments

42: In the seasonal sequence, we see the consequences of nationalism.

June 10, 2018 by bonnie Leave a Comment

I am fresh off the Autumn reading high, and I am so curious to see how Ali Smith is going to use the seasons to make social commentary. I read both Autumn and Winter fairly quickly, so there is absolutely something compelling about Ali Smith’s literary style that has grabbed me. In Winter, Smith completely changes the characters and basic plot, although the post-Brexit Britain is ever in the foreground. This time, Sophia and Art, a mother and son, are the major characters. Sophia is […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: ali smith, bonnie

bonnie's CBR10 Review No:42 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: ali smith, bonnie ·
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41: Seasons come and go, but apparently, bad choices are forever.

June 10, 2018 by bonnie Leave a Comment

I’ve been curious to see how British literature would be changing post-Brexit. Zadie Smith’s Swing Time begins to address this shift in Britain post-2010, but it foreshadows Brexit. Therefore, I was interested to see how Ali Smith’s Autumn would be incorporating Brexit into its main plot. I had heard buzz about her seasonal cycle, but had not made the plunge until my end-of-school-year library binge saw this and the next book make its way into my basket. I am really, really glad I gave this […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: ali smith, bonnie, Brexit

bonnie's CBR10 Review No:41 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: ali smith, bonnie, Brexit ·
Rating:
· 0 Comments
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