Spring

The third installment in Ali Smith's Seasonal Quartet, Spring weaves together two storylines set against the political turmoil of Brexit-era Britain, interspersing them with lyrical passages about the natural world, satirical monologues about media manipulation and surveillance capitalism, and meditations on the writings of Katherine Mansfield and Rainer Maria Rilke. The novel moves nonlinearly through time, primarily between October 2018 and the following spring.

Richard Lease, an aging TV and film director best remembered for experimental dramas he made for the BBC's Play for Today slot in the 1970s, stands on a train platform in Kingussie, a small town in the Scottish Highlands, in October 2018. He is in profound grief following the recent death of his longtime friend and collaborator, Paddy (Patricia Heal), a brilliant Irish scriptwriter. He has abandoned his phone in a London coffee shop, fled his professional obligations, and taken a train as far north as it would go. He carries on an internal dialogue with an "imaginary daughter," a figure he has maintained in his mind for decades since his real daughter left the country with his ex-wife in the late 1980s.

Through flashbacks, the novel traces Richard's relationship with Paddy across nearly 50 years. They first met when he was a young assistant on a production she had scripted. He sought her out for his first solo directing job, and she agreed on the condition that they do something formally unexpected. Their partnership produced groundbreaking work, including Sea of Troubles (1971), an experimental docudrama about Northern Ireland that foresaw Bloody Sunday, the 1972 massacre of civilians by British soldiers, and Andy Hoffnung (1972), one of the earliest UK television dramas about the Holocaust.

In March 2018, Richard visits the increasingly frail Paddy to discuss a new assignment: directing a film adaptation of April, a bestselling novel about Mansfield and Rilke living near each other in a Swiss town in 1922 without ever meeting. The screenplay is being written by Martin Terp, a commercially successful but artistically hollow writer-producer. Terp has drafted sex scenes between the two writers, an absurdity Paddy demolishes: Mansfield had tuberculosis by 1922, was barely able to walk, and died in early 1923. Paddy urges Richard to push back and lends him volumes of Mansfield's letters. By April, Paddy is declining rapidly, raging about Brexit, the Windrush scandal, and the Grenfell Tower fire while her twin sons, Dermot and Patrick, limit Richard's visits. She dies on August 11, 2018.

In October, Richard reads Terp's latest draft, which fabricates a sexual encounter between Mansfield and Rilke in a cable car. Disgusted, Richard proposes restructuring the film as a series of "postcards," slight revelatory moments from the writers' lives. Terp's dismissive reply ignores the proposal, copies all the backers, and humiliates Richard. Walking through London, Richard impulsively buys a train ticket north and boards a train to Kingussie. On the platform, he resolves to kill himself. He lies down on the tracks beneath an arriving train, positioning his neck against a rail. Florence, a 12-year-old schoolgirl who has just stepped off the train, crouches on the platform edge and tells him: "I really need you not to do that" (112).

The novel's second storyline follows Brittany (Brit) Hall, a young Detainee Custody Officer (DCO) at a UK Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) called Spring House, a facility where people awaiting deportation or asylum decisions are held in indefinite, prison-like detention. The narrative catalogs the dehumanizing conditions: staff call detainees "deets," body cameras are manipulated, and officers use abusive language. Torquil (Torq), a Scottish colleague, warns Brit early on about the numbing effects of the job. Brit develops a daily ritual of greeting the small hedges outside the entrance, her personal marker between the underworld of the IRC and normal life. She hears about a mysterious schoolgirl who walked into the center, bypassed security, and persuaded management to deep-clean all the toilets. Brit's personal life deteriorates as the job erodes her emotionally; her boyfriend Josh confronts her about her growing inability to care, and they fight bitterly.

One October Monday, Florence, a 12-year-old mixed-race girl in a school uniform, approaches Brit at the train station and asks for help getting to Kingussie. She shows Brit an old postcard of the town and says she wants to leave no digital footprint, refusing to use phones or computers. Florence is in foster care. Brit gives Florence directions and walks toward work, but soon stops, turns around, and runs back to the station. She buys a ticket and boards the Edinburgh train.

On the journey north, they develop a warm, sparring rapport. Florence refuses to share details about her family and proposes reimagining borders as places where people become doubly possible. When Florence falls asleep against Brit's arm, Brit reads Florence's notebook, titled "Hot Air," which contains sharp, satirical pieces including a fairy tale about a girl who refuses to dance herself to death when a village tries to sacrifice her to bring back spring. They stay overnight at a Holiday Inn, where payment is mysteriously waived when Florence gives her name. Florence tells Brit they are "humanizing the machine" together.

At Kingussie station, Florence saves Richard from the tracks. Alda Lyons, a local librarian operating a coffee truck at the station, offers all three a lift in her van toward Inverness. Alda recognizes Richard's old TV work and remembers his productions better than he does. As they drive, she points out local history, including the Culloden battlefield and the Highland Clearances, the forced displacement of Highland populations. Richard falls asleep and dreams of the young Paddy, who tells him to stop making everything about himself. At an Inverness supermarket, Alda and Florence slip away, leaving Brit stranded with Florence's pink schoolbag.

The narrative reveals what follows: Florence runs across the Culloden battlefield and leaps into the arms of a young woman, her mother. Officers from SA4A, the private security firm that runs Spring House and other UK detention centers, descend, handcuff the mother, and place them in separate vans. Tourists film the scene on their phones. Alda, who has been shouting at the departing vans, is loaded into a police car.

The novel flashes forward to the following March. Richard has broken his contract with Terp and is funding a new documentary, A Thousand Thousand People, by selling family possessions. He films interviews with the "Auld Alliance," an underground volunteer network that helps people navigate the immigration detention system, all of whose members use the alias Alda or Aldo Lyons. Richard also receives a posthumous bequest from Paddy: a 1948 edition of Mansfield's Collected Stories with her handwriting filling the blank pages, closing with the instruction: "Blaze the trail. Make it your film, not his film" (285). At Clava, an ancient burial site near Culloden, Richard reads Shelley's "The Cloud" in Paddy's honor and, for the first time, searches for his estranged daughter online. He finds her at a London university but does not yet dare to contact her.

Brit, back at Spring House that March, has received no promotion. Florence's mother's fate remains uncertain: one version says she was deported; another says she was released to avoid media attention. Brit keeps Florence's notebook and schoolbag in her wardrobe, not yet decided whether to return them or destroy them. Josh texts a translation of the Latin on Florence's school blazer, vivunt spe: "live in hope." They do not reconcile. Brit continues her hedge ritual, one day breaking off a twig and crushing a leaf on the train home to smell the green. The novel closes with a lyrical passage about April as the month of opening and restoration, ending with the image of a flowering tree buzzing with new life: "time's factory" (336).