Smith has managed to achieve something that is particularly difficult – to write a fiction about the present without sounding naff. This last book feels very fresh, because the pandemic is such a shock in itself. The Seasonal Quartet was sparked by the Brexit vote, but, depressingly, Brexit felt like nothing new, just a reiteration of old oppositions. This is surely one of the first works of published fiction to describe a Covid-world. Beyond the political dimension, one of the most peculiar things about Summer is how current it is. The siblings’ opposition initially seems too stark, too state of the nation, but this is softened by their love and sympathy for one another. Summer begins with Grace (former actress), her ex-husband and new partner who live next door, and her children Sacha (young activist) and Robert (a boy in the mould of Dominic Cummings et al).
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