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

"In Britain, Smith has won the Whitbread, the Goldsmiths, and the Costa prizes, and has been shortlisted for the Man Booker three times. American readers ought to be better acquainted with her genius. . . . This ambitious four-novel sequence will end with summer and Smith in her element. If we are all very lucky, perhaps the world will catch up with her there, too." -- Slate

"Smith's voice, so wise and joyful, is the perfect antidote to troubled times: raw and bitter in the face of injustice, yet always alive to hope, however slight - like the buddleia that blossomed in the wreckage of cities after the Second World War, calmly continuing its own natural cycle oblivious to human destruction." - New Statesman