Le réalisateur Richard Lease a connu des jours meilleurs. Il n'est plus à la mode, et ne se remet pas de la mort de sa grande amie Paddy. Elle fut sa scénariste, son soutien et sa boussole. Ivre de chagrin, il entreprend un voyage vers le nord du pays, en dialoguant avec une enfant imaginaire, faute d'être resté en contact avec sa propre fille qu'il n'a pas vue grandir. Sa route va croiser celle de Brittany, qui travaille dans un centre de détention pour immigrants. Elle aussi est partie de Londres sans réfléchir, à la poursuite de Florence, une mystérieuse jeune fille qui a secoué l'institution pour laquelle Brittany travaille. Le printemps va-t-il permettre à ces âmes perdues de retrouver leur chemin ?
Ali Smith poursuit sa réflexion poétique et politique sur notre époque en portant une attention particulière aux gens déplacés, en fuite ou rejetés. Sa fantaisie joyeuse infuse une narration pourtant centrée sur la misère cachée de nos sociétés contemporaines, et en faisant appel à Charlie Chaplin, Katherine Mansfield, Rilke ou encore Shakespeare, elle nous amène vers un printemps libérateur.
Dans la maison de retraite Maltings Care, Daniel observe la vie qui s'en va lentement. Presque chaque jour, Elisabeth lui rend visite, elle qui n'a oublié ni l'audace ni la générosité de cet homme à présent centenaire, qui fut son voisin pendant son enfance. Il l'a éveillée à la littérature, au cinéma, à la peinture, et désormais un lien profond les unit.Mais autour d'eux, tout un pays se déchire au sujet de son avenir - le référendum sur le Brexit vient d'avoir lieu. Les deux amis tentent, chacun à sa façon, entre le temps qui passe et les souvenirs qui affluent, d'accompagner le cycle perpétuel des saisons.Avec ce premier volet d'une suite romanesque en quatre volumes, Ali Smith explore les fractures de nos démocraties modernes et nous interroge sur le sens de nos existences.Un de ces livres rares, ne ressemblant à aucun autre. Inoubliable. Le Figaro littéraire.Entre poésie, onirisme et rébellion, une ode à l'anticonformisme et à l'imagination. Les Échos.Traduit de l'anglais par Laetitia Devaux.
Sophia Cleves a proposé à son fils Art - avec qui elle entretient des relations plutôt distantes - de venir passer Noël dans sa grande maison en Cornouailles. A cette occasion, il était prévu qu'il lui présente sa petite amie Charlotte. Sauf que Charlotte rompt avec Art. Ce dernier ne voulant pas se désavouer devant sa mère, il propose à une jeune femme rencontrée à un arrêt de bus de jouer le rôle de Charlotte le temps des fêtes de fin d'année.
Une fois sur place, le faux couple se rend compte que la mère d'Art ne va pas bien. Son comportement est erratique, et elle semble confuse. Art appelle sa tante Iris au secours, bien que les deux femmes ne se soient pas parlé depuis trente ans. Un drôle de week-end commence alors : le souvenir d'autres fêtes de Noël surgit, la mémoire de l'enfance commune aussi, puis la brouille autour des choix idéologiques des deux soeurs refait surface. Car Sophia est une femme d'affaires à la retraite, alors que sa soeur Iris a consacré sa vie au militantisme politique et n'a renié aucune de ses convictions.
L'hiver, pour Ali Smith, est la saison des ruptures, des convictions qui nous séparent, avant d'être celle des retrouvailles. Son regard sur les faux-semblants de nos sociétés à l'ère de la post-vérité est impitoyable, tendre et drôle à la fois, portée par une langue d'une grande poésie.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017 SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER 'In a country apparently divided against itself, a writer such as Smith is more valuable than a whole parliament of politicians' Financial Times 'Undoubtedly Smith at her best. Puckish, yet elegant; angry, but comforting' The Times 'A beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams and transient realities ... The first post-Brexit novel' Guardian A breathtakingly inventive new novel from the Man Booker-shortlisted and Baileys Prize-winning author of How to be both Daniel is a century old. Elisabeth, born in 1984, has her eye on the future. The United Kingdom is in pieces, divided by a historic once-in-a-generation summer. Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand in hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll round, as ever . . . 'Terrific, extraordinary, playful... There is an awful lot to lift the soul' Daily Mail 'Bold and brilliant' Observer
From the bestselling author of Autumn and Winter , as well as the Baileys Prize-winning How to be both , comes the next installment in the remarkable, once-in-a-generation masterpiece, the Seasonal Quartet What unites Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Rilke, Beethoven, Brexit, the present, the past, the north, the south, the east, the west, a man mourning lost times, a woman trapped in modern times? Spring. The great connective. With an eye to the migrancy of story over time, and riffing on Pericles, one of Shakespeare's most resistant and rollicking works, Ali Smith tells the impossible tale of an impossible time. In a time of walls and lockdown Smith opens the door. The time we're living in is changing nature. Will it change the nature of story? Hope springs eternal. Praise for the Seasonal Quartet: 'Transcendental writing about art, death, political lies, and all the dimensions of love . It's a case not so much of reading between the lines as of being blinded by the light between the lines - in a good way' Deborah Levy on Autumn 'The novel of the year is obviously Autumn , which managed the miracle of making at least a kind of sense out of post-Brexit Britain' Olivia Laing, Observer on Autumn 'Ali Smith is flat-out brilliant, and she's on fire these days... Combining brainy playfulness with depth, topicality with timelessness, and complexity with accessibility while delivering an impassioned defence of human decency and art' NPR on Winter 'Rank[s] among the most original, consoling and inspiring of the artistic responses to 'this mad and bitter mess' of the present' Financial Times on Winter 'A novel of great ferocity, tenderness and generosity of spirit that you feel Dickens would have recognised... Smith is engaged in an extended process of mythologizing the present states of Britain... Luminously beautiful' Observer on Winter
BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Times, Guardian, Observer, Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard, New York Times . . . 'Capacious, surprising, generous . . . A book with Christmas at its heart' Guardian 'Dazzling. Grief and pain are transfigured by luminous moments of humour, insight and connection . . . Even in the bleak midwinter, Smith is evergreen' Daily Telegraph 'Graceful, mischievous, joyful . . . Infused with some much-needed humour, happiness and hope' Independent 'A novel of great ferocity, tenderness and generosity of spirit . . . Luminously beautiful' Observer From the Baileys Prize-winning, Man Booker-shortlisted author of Autumn and How to be both . . . The unmissable second novel in Ali Smith's acclaimed 'Seasonal' quartet -- a Christmas story like no other Winter? Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone, so the old song goes. The shortest days, the longest nights. The trees are bare and shivering. The summer's leaves? Dead litter. The world shrinks; the sap sinks. But winter makes things visible. And if there's ice, there'll be fire. In Ali Smith's Winter , lifeforce matches up to the toughest of the seasons. In this second novel in her acclaimed Seasonal cycle, the follow-up to her sensational Autumn, Smith's shape-shifting quartet of novels casts a merry eye over a bleak post-truth era with a story rooted in history, memory and warmth, its taproot deep in the evergreens: art, love, laughter. It's the season that teaches us survival. Here comes Winter.
Discover the unforgettable finale to Ali Smith''s dazzling literary tour-de-forcebr>br>In the present, Sacha knows the world''s in trouble. Her brother Robert just is trouble. Their mother and father are having trouble. Meanwhile the world''s in meltdown - and the real meltdown hasn''t even started yet. In the past, a lovely summer. A different brother and sister know they''re living on borrowed time. br>br>This is a story about people on the brink of change. They''re family, but they think they''re strangers. So: where does family begin? And what do people who think they''ve got nothing in common have in common?br>br>Summer.br>br>''Smith''s seasonal quartet of novels is a bold and brilliant experiment'' Independentbr>br>''The novel''s hopeful message about the healing power of friendship ensures the quartet ends on a feel-good note'' Sunday Times>
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of Spring, Winter, Autumn, Public library and other stories, How to be both, Shire, Artful, There but for the, The first person and other stories, Girl Meets Boy, The Accidental, The whole story and other stories, Hotel World, Other stories and other stories, Like and Free Love. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. The Accidental was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Bailey''s Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Autumn was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017 and Winter was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2018. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.>
Daniel Gluck, centenaire, ne reçoit pas d'autres visites dans sa maison de retraite que celles d'une jeune femme qui vient lui faire la lecture. Aucun lien familial entre les deux pourtant, mais une amitié profonde qui remonte à l'enfance d'Elisabeth, quand Daniel était son voisin. Elisabeth n'oubliera jamais la générosité de cet homme si gentil et distingué qui l'a éveillée à la littérature, au cinéma et à la peinture.
Les rêves - ceux des gens ordinaires, ou ceux des artistes oubliés - prennent une place importante dans la vie des protagonistes d'Ali Smith, mais le réel de nos sociétés profondément divisées y trouve également un écho. Le référendum sur le Brexit vient d'avoir lieu, et tout un pays se déchire au sujet de son avenir, alors que les deux amis mesurent, chacun à sa manière, le temps qui passe. Comment accompagner le mouvement perpétuel des saisons, entre les souvenirs qui affluent et la vie qui s'en va ?
L'écriture d'Ali Smith explore les fractures de nos démocraties modernes et nous interroge sur le sens de nos existences avec une poésie qui n'appartient qu'à elle, et qui lui a permis de s'imposer comme l'un des écrivains britanniques les plus singuliers, les plus lus dans le monde entier.
How to be both is the dazzling new novel by Ali Smith.
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014 Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith's novels are like nothing else.
How to be both is a novel all about art's versatility. Borrowing from painting's fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it's a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There's a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There's the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real - and all life's givens get given a second chance.
'Smith can make anything happen, which is why she is one of our most exciting writers today' Daily Telegraph 'She's a genius, genuinely modern in the heroic, glorious sense' Alain de Botton 'I take my hat off to Ali Smith. Her writing lifts the soul' Evening Standard Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962 and lives in Cambridge. She is the author of Artful, There but for the, 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.
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The unmissable finale to Ali Smith''s dazzling literary tour de force: the Seasonal quartet concludes in 2020 with SummerIn the present, Sacha knows the world''s in trouble. Her brother Robert just is trouble. Their mother and father are having trouble.Meanwhile the world''s in meltdown - and the real meltdown hasn''t even started yet. In the past, a lovely summer. A different brother and sister know they''re living on borrowed time. This is a story about people on the brink of change. They''re family, but they think they''re strangers. So: where does family begin? And what do people who think they''ve got nothing in common have in common?Summer.PRAISE FOR SEASONAL: ''The novel of the year is obviously Autumn'' Observer on Autumn ''Masterful... Winter is utterly original'' New York Times Book Review on Winter''Luminous, generous, hope-filled... A dazzling hymn to hope. Ali Smith is lighting us a path out of the nightmarish now'' Observer on Spring''Smith''s seasonal quartet of novels is a bold and brilliant experiment'' Independent>
'The Accidental' is at once a mysterious story of secret identities and a ruthlessly honest look at the silent cracks that can develop unnoticed in relationships over time. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2005, Whitbread Novel Award 2005 and the Saltire Award 2005.
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Une fille rencontre un garçon. Ils s'aiment. C'est la plus belle et la plus banale histoire du monde. Sous la plume magique d'Ali Smith, le conte devient militant. Car l'auteur d' Hôtel Univers a introduit une variante : une fille rencontre une fille. Elles s'aiment. C'est la plus belle et la plus banale histoire du monde. Mais la réalité n'est jamais si simple, même dans les contes. Midge et Anthea sont soeurs. Elles travaillent chez Pure, une puissante multinationale. Au premier regard, Anthea tombe amoureuse de la jeune Robin. La découverte de l'homosexualité d'Anthea bouleverse les certitudes de sa soeur. Et lorsqu'elle rencontre Paul, le trouble est encore plus fort. Paul est attirant, gracile, délicat. Paul est un garçon. Mais il ressemble à une fille.
Girl meets boy est un livre poétique et plein d'humour, qui revisite Les Métamorphoses d'Ovide et s'amuse à brouiller les pistes du masculin / féminin.
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A richly inventive new collection of stories from Ali Smith, author of How to be both , winner of the Baileys Women's Prize and the Costa Novel Award and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Why are books so very powerful? What do the books we've read over our lives - our own personal libraries - make of us? What does the unravelling of our tradition of public libraries, so hard-won but now in jeopardy, say about us? The stories in Ali Smith's new collection are about what we do with books and what they do with us: how they travel with us; how they shock us, change us, challenge us, banish time while making us older, wiser and ageless all at once; how they remind us to pay attention to the world we make. Public libraries are places of joy, freedom, community and discovery - and right now they are under threat from funding cuts and widespread closures across the UK and further afield. With this brilliantly inventive collection, Ali Smith joins the campaign to save our public libraries and celebrate their true place in our culture and history.
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Dans la banlieue de Londres, les Lee reçoivent à dîner. Puis soudain Miles Garth, l'un des invités, va s'enfermer dans une chambre et décide de ne plus en sortir. L'affaire s'ébruite, et Miles devient célèbre. Pour s'en débarrasser, les Lee retrouvent ceux qui l'ont fréquenté : Anna, une triste employée de bureau, Mark, photographe homosexuel en deuil, et May, une vieille dame aux portes de la folie. Leurs souvenirs dessinent un portrait de Miles bien troublant. Mais peut-on vraiment connaitre un homme ? Seule Brooke, la fille surdouée des Lee, va s'approcher de la vérité. A travers cette fable contemporaine, Ali Smith se joue, dans un humour grinçant et une prose virevoltante, de l'hypocrisie des rapports humains.
Conçue en 1978 dans une salle de cinéma, Alhambra, alias Ambre, est une étonnante créature. Elle n'en est pas moins une femme. Lorsqu'elle fait irruption chez les Smart, par un beau matin d'août, on dirait un ange. Mais il lui faudra peu de temps pour révéler sa vraie nature : si Ambre est apparue subitement dans cette famille anglaise en vacances dans le Norfolk, c'est d'abord pour y semer la perturbation. Avec une extraordinaire virtuosité, Ali Smith fait parler tour à tour chaque membre de la famille Smart, livrant quatre points
de vue successifs sur cette entreprise de séduction réussie. Variant les angles, les styles, les voix, elle compose une fugue étourdissante où le roman de moeurs se mêle à la comédie érotique.
A STUNNING RETELLING BY THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR ALI SMITH
'Joyful' JEANETTE WINTERSON
'Pulls you in and doesn't let you go . . . bold and brilliant' JACKIE KAY
'A glorious wide-awake dream of a book . . . By the time I finished, my heart was beating and tears stood in my eyes, even as I had the biggest smile written all over my face' KIRSTY GUNN
Girl meets boy. It's a story as old as time. But what happens when an old story meets a brand new set of circumstances? Ali Smith's re-mix of Ovid's most joyful metamorphosis is a story about the kind of fluidity that can't be bottled and sold. It is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation, a story of puns and doubles, reversals and revelations. Funny and fresh, poetic and political, here is a tale of change for the modern world.
There but for the is the sparkling satirical novel by bestselling Ali Smith'There once was a man who, one night between the main course and the sweet at a dinner party, went upstairs and locked himself in one of the bedrooms of the house of the people who were giving the dinner party . . .'As time passes by and the consequences of this stranger's actions ripple outwards, touching the owners, the guests, the neighbours and the whole country, so Ali Smith draws us into a beautiful, strange place where everyone is so much more than they at first appear. There but for the was hailed as one of the best books of 2011 by Jeanette Winterson, A.S. Byatt, Patrick Ness, Sebastian Barry, Boyd Tonkin, Erica Wagner and Nick Barley.'Dazzlingly inventive' A.S. Byatt'Whimsically devastating. Playful, humorous, serious, profoundly clever and profoundly affecting' Guardian'A real gem' Erica Wagner, The Times'Eccentric, adventurous, intoxicating, dazzling. This is a novel with serious ambitions that remains huge fun to read' Literary Review'If you liked Smith's earlier fiction, you will know that she enjoys setting up a situation before chucking in a literary Molotov cocktail then describing what happens' Sunday Express'Wonderful, word-playful, compelling' Jeanette Winterson'Smith can make anything happen, which is why she is one of our most exciting writers today' Daily Telegraph'I take my hat off to Ali Smith. Her writing lifts the soul' Evening Standard