Ali Smith’s post-Brexit, Booker-shortlisted Autumn was a superb look at both a loving relationship and a country in flux. It was eviscerating about Britain in 2017, a country in the midst of an identity crisis, ruled by an amoral, indifferent Conservative Party, where doors are smeared with the words ‘Go Home’, where funding to universities is slashed, and where dismissive, dead-eyed officiousness rules. “When the state is not kind,” Smith wrote, “the people are fodder.”
Just over a year later comes its follow-up, Winter. Like its predecessor, it’s an inter-generational story that crisscrosses recent British history. At its centre is Sophia, a retired businesswoman living in a huge house in Cornwall. Estranged from her sister, Iris, she appears to be going to seed; she has become irascible with the people around her and has started to see a ghostly floating head in her field of vision.