Winter

　　Ali Smith季節四部曲系列第二集

　　

　　冬季。陰鬱、蒼涼的季節，寒風刺骨。



　　橫亙在一對關係降到冰點的姊妹間，長達近三十年的沉默，也猶如嚴冬中冰凍的土地和海洋，難以消融。然而隨著2016年的聖誕節來臨，一切似乎將有改變。



　　60多歲的Sophia曾是實業家，總是將工作置於家庭之前，如今已經退休，住在康瓦爾一處有15多個房間的宅邸中，而她的姊姊Iris，則是一名終身的社運份子，最近才剛剛結束在希臘救援難民的行動，回到家鄉。



　　Sophia的兒子Arthur以作家身分自居，不久前剛和情人分手──那個人發了一些令他難堪的推文，攻擊了他的部落格「Art in Nature」。不想和母親解釋自己已恢復單身，Arthur於是花錢聘僱在公車站偶遇的克羅埃西亞女同性戀Lux，讓她假扮成自己的女友，和他一起回到康瓦爾過聖誕節。



　　這四個人帶著他們各自的艱難課題，在Sophia的大房子裡相聚。在短短幾天共處的時光中，兩個老婦人不停回看她們對彼此的憎惡的來源──個性、政治立場、對生活的選擇等等，並重新發現了深藏在其下的情感。



　　儘管此系列已出版的兩本書可以做為各自獨立的作品來閱讀，但實際上Smith安排了一些連結，包含兩個故事所牽涉到的歷史及現代事件等等。在第二部曲中，Smith將現在的敘述與閃現的回憶交織，延續《Autumn》關於時間的探討以及對社會脈動的關心，透過這個根植於歷史和記憶的故事，以溫暖、睿智、愉快而堅定的眼光，審視了我們身處的後真相時代。（文/博客來編譯）

Shortlisted for the British Book Award - Fiction Book of the Year and the Orwell Prize for Political Writing

The second novel in the Man Booker Prize-nominated author's Seasonal cycle; the much-anticipated follow-up to Autumn (a New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Financial Times, The Guardian, Southern Living, and Kirkus Reviews best book of the year).

Winter. Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone, so the old song goes. And now Art's mother is seeing things. Come to think of it, Art's seeing things himself.

When four people, strangers and family, converge on a fifteen-bedroom house in Cornwall for Christmas, will there be enough room for everyone?

Winter. It makes things visible. Ali Smith's shapeshifting Winter casts a warm, wise, merry and uncompromising eye over a post-truth era in a story rooted in history and memory and with a taproot deep in the evergreens, art and love.

ALI SMITH was born in Inverness, Scotland, in 1962 and lives in Cambridge, England. She is the author of Autumn, How to be both, There but for the, Artful, Free Love, Like, Hotel World, Other Stories and other stories, The Whole Story and other stories, The Accidental, Girl Meets Boy and The First Person and other stories. Hotel World and The Accidental were both short-listed for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Autumn was short-listed for the 2017 Man Booker Prize.