Spring is a time of mixed emotions: hope and anxiety, memory and desire.

Spring
ALI SMITH
(Hamish Hamilton, 352 PP, £16.99)
Tablet bookshop price £15.29 • Tel 020 7799 4064

Spring is a time of mixed emotions: hope and anxiety, memory and desire. As in her two previous novels, Autumn and Winter, Ali Smith uses the season to evoke human grief and uncertainty, weaving together different stories, from episodes in the lives of ordinary people to ghost stories, legends and the history of Britain. Her ordinary people include Richard, an elderly, well-meaning film-maker, a man who has “touched many a leg” in his time and who is now mourning the death of an old friend. There is also Brittany who works in a grim detention centre and Alda: librarian, coffee-truck driver and organ­iser in the Auld Alliance, a Scottish-based network helping refugees. Less ordinary are Florence, a miracle-working schoolgirl who can become invisible at will, and the ghosts of Katherine Mansfield, Rainer Maria Rilke and Charlie Chaplin whose afterlives continue to inspire.

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