Cleverly constructed and elegantly written. It's both an engaging human story and a place for wider topical observations. Bring on Spring (Evening Standard)

If Ali Smith's four quartets in, and about, time do not endure to rank among the most original, consoling and inspiring of the artistic responses to 'this mad and bitter mess' of the present, then we will have plunged into an even bleaker mid-winter than people often fear (Financial Times)

Smith is a specialist by now in using a quizzical, feather-light prose style to interrogate the heaviest of material...throughout Winter, grief and pain are transfigured, sometimes lastingly, by luminous moments of humour, insight and connection... Even in the bleak midwinter, Smith is evergreen (Telegraph)

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)

Graceful... That trademark mischievous wit and wordplay, a joyful reminder of the most basic, elemental delights of reading ... Infused with some much-needed humour, happiness and hope (Independent)

A capacious, generous shapeshifter of a novel taking in Greenham Common and Barbara Hepworth, Shakespeare and global migration, it juxtaposes art with nature and protest with apathy, finding surprising alliances in a family riven by feuds. It's a book with Christmas at its heart, in all its familiarity and estrangement: about time, and out of time, like the festival itself (The Guardian)

Dazzling second instalment of Ali Smith's seasonal quartet (The Daily Telegraph)

A book I can't wait to read for Christmas (The Observer)

Relish this instalment (The Times)

I would like to be given Winter for Christmas (The Observer)

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.