Summary

Part 1 of Spring begins with a stream of consciousness diatribe from the imagined voice of a demagogic political tactician. This first chapter, absent any other context, serves as a cathartic wailing against the current age and social order in which the European Liberal tradition is seen in decay. This is then followed by a brief, also otherworldly narration from the perspective of the globe itself, invoking the violence that will accompany climate change. As an introduction to the novel, these first pages appear as a curse or a vexing incantation of some sort. Smith then proceeds to introduce Richard Lease, in the midst of “removing himself from story” (15) altogether. Richard Lease is an aging film and television director whose career peaked in the 1970s. The reader first encounters him on a platform at a train station in Scotland and comes to understand that he...