Summer primarily follows the stories of two sets of siblings: in early 2020, Sacha and Robert have nothing in common, but a chance meeting with strangers Art and Charlotte could be a catalyst for change in a year of uncertainty told alongside this, during the Second World War, Daniel and Hannah struggle with not knowing what has happened to each other, Daniel from his imprisonment as a German living in the UK and Hannah from her position as part of the French Resistance. Summer manages not only to capture the sudden shift in lifestyle and priorities that has happened over the course of the past year but also to wrap up the stories of the characters from the previous three instalments. This quartet of novels has been such a fascinating exploration of the time that we are living through and has chronicled the key turning points of the past four years almost in real time. Little did I know what was to come in the world and that Summer, instead, would have the backdrop of a global pandemic. For example, in my review of Winter, under the assumption that Spring and Summer would follow chronologically through the year 2017, I made the (incorrect) predictions that Spring would have the backdrop of the 2017 terror attacks and Summer would have the backdrop of the Grenfell Tower disaster. As I have been preparing to write this review, I have been looking back on what I had written in my reviews for the previous three instalments of Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet and it has been interesting to see how my thoughts have developed on the series as new instalments are published.
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