The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Smith, Ali. Spring. Pantheon Books, 2019.

Ali Smith’s Spring is a short novel set in three parts. Part 1 is based around one of the two characters whose inner world the narration reveals, Richard Lease. The novel begins by situating Richard on the platform of a train station in Kingussie, Scotland. It is not immediately clear why he is there or how he got there, but, as the story unfolds, and through continued reflection onto his salient concerns and memories, it is evident that Richard is planning to kill himself. Richard, the reader comes to learn, is an aging film and television director who has just lost his friend and closest professional confidant, Paddy. Paddy, who is a decade or so older than Richard, has succumbed to illness and died. Richard reflects on the early impressions that Paddy made on him, on their brief sexual relationship, and on how her family kept her cloistered from life in her final days. There is no authentic way to honor her memory, Richard believes. Distraught, he abandons a film project he is supposed to be directing in London and takes a train north to Scotland.

It is here that his story intersects with that of Brittany Hall’s – the other main character whose inner world the narration reveals. Brittany, or Britt as she referred to by friends and family, is a young woman in her twenties. She comes from a modest working-class background, and, though quite clever in school, has not been able to pursue higher education due to the financial constraints of her class position. She lives with her mother and works at a soul-crushing job as a security agent at a privatized migrant detention center. She cannot truly accept the banal cruelty that her work entails and finds various ways to deaden herself to its reality. This is most evident when her old school friend and sometimes lover Josh tries to cajole her into realizing how evil her job really is. Britt reacts defensively to his injunction and cuts off all contact with Josh, despite the strong connection she feels towards him and the respect she had for him. One day on the way to work a young girl stops Britt on the platform of the train station. The girl asks her how she would get to a certain place in the United Kingdom that is depicted on a postcard that she is holding. Britt is concerned that this strange girl is unaccompanied, and on a whim, follows her onto a train ends up riding it all the way to Scotland with her. Along the way, the mysterious girl, Florence, and Britt become fast friends. Florence is incredibly precocious and idealistic. Britt is completely entrance by her charisma and moral aptitude. She eventually pieces together that Florence is the girl about whom her colleagues at the detention center were referring when they had said that some girl waltzed into their manager’s office and miraculously got the security company to clean the detainees’ squalid toilets. When Britt and Florence arrive on the platform of the station at Kingussie, Scotland, Florence notices Richard on the tracks about to commit suicide. She firmly induces him not to do so. For some reason Richard complies and his life is saved by sheer chance. The three then go to a coffee van that does not serve coffee and are given a ride by a woman named Alda toward some destination that Florence insists she must get to right away, but about which only Florence and Alda seem to know anything. Alda serenades her passengers in Scottish song and narrates for their edification the recent history of the Scottish highlands and of English expansion. Culloden, the battle site that they are heading towards, is of epic significance as the last failed Scottish resistance to the English. Along the way, Alda comes to understand that Richard is the same director who has made many of her favorite films, those that she has adored since childhood. Richard is shocked to learn that his early works are remembered and that they mean anything to anyone. His life is as if doubly saved by the chance encounter.

Britt, meanwhile, feels excluded and very irritated by Alda. They arrive at carpark at a grocery store. There, somehow Alda and Florence evade Britt and continue to battle site at Culloden. Britt is left frantically looking for Florence. Richard, meanwhile, is reverently inspecting lemons supermarket, newly contented, with a new lease on life. Britt comes to realize that Florence was a migrant separated from her mother by the inhumane detention system and that Alda was helping reunite them.

When Britt returns to her job at SA4A IRC as a Detainee Custody Officer, she is feted by colleagues for having encountered the notorious girl intruder of lore. This only lasts a few days and soon Britt lapses into her earlier detached misery, but now with a renewed bitterness at being used and abandoned by Florence. Britt still has Florence’s backpack with her notebook in which the young writer has recorded a series of stories and reflections. It is now apparent from Britt’s account of the contents of Florence’s notebook that her stories have comprised the preludes to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of the novel.

Richard has been far more positively inflected by his encounter with Florence and Alda. He learns that Alda is part of a migrant escape network, and she has been employing an alias with him the whole duration of their journey. Richard decides to quit the film project April for good, knowing he will never be able to wield the creative influence the project deserves. He begins a documentary about the volunteers that make up the migrant relief network. He calls it A Thousand Thousand Faces in reference to a song he remembers Paddy singing. Richard interviews workers from this liberation group and poses probing questions to them. He is moved by their commitment and zeal.

Spring ends with a lengthy rumination on the month of April. April is a mercurial and transformative month, full of contradictions, lessons, and ultimately, possibilities. April is the integral month of the spring season, the most wrought with rebirth and renewal and yet the most confusing and difficult to fathom. Spring is imbued with this month’s mercurial spirit of hope and becoming.