To follow one strand, the book almost ends on Roughton Heath, near Cromer, where Einstein stayed during the war. Smith’s Joycean trick of writing a novel that, seemingly linear, has cyclicality and an iceberg-like depth, allows for continuous literary detective work. Summer echoes many texts ( A Winter’s Tale, David Copperfield, the story of Hero and Leander, etc.), as well as the other novels in the quartet, and is underpinned by the story of Einstein in Norfolk. She writes him and other young characters very well, with nothing of the awkwardness of other older writers. She has fallen a little into the pitfall of the hopeful, proselytising liberal, but this is tempered and questioned somewhat by the character of Robert. 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).

Summer ali smith review