Well, this was a strange one because, let’s face it, I have bemoaned many an author before for being lazy with the time honoured tradition of using the comma, speech marks and the full stop where appropriate. And when they have been lacking I have become somewhat distracted, which for me, spoils the experience but, here, in Ali Smith third Season book (Autumn and Winter being the two that preceded it, with the final instalment, Summer out now), I find myself unperturbed. Strange! So, in honour of this damned right annoyance having been nothing more than a slight irritation on this occasion, I shall fill you in on all things Spring, in a way I hope the author would approve. There are beginnings and there are endings but not the many you might think. Spring does not start it germinates. It germinates from Winter but the only connection between the books is the author's name on the cover so you can read the seasons in any order you wish. Spring is also a schoolgirl with amazing powers, powers of persuasion, a schoolgirl who is able to walk into a brothel and out again without hurt or trauma whilst emancipating the workers. A girl who can rescue her mother from a high security detention centre for illegal immigrants, save the life of a stranger hundreds of miles away and travel the country with impunity and without payment or service. Spring is a time for regeneration, life to bloom, death to be celebrated, be it the death of winter or the death of a loved one, and with the year this country has had . . . well! Spring, both book and season, are so full of delights I would recommend them both. Be out, get out, come rain - which there has been a lot of in England recently - or shine, which seems to make us humans kinder, more affable, and enjoy it, them, life, the memories of those who have passed and read; read this, Spring, but read that too, the one you’ve been putting off the one you loved as a child, the one you didn’t read but should have and revel in spring. Ali Smith's writing style will not be for everyone I'm sure, for it has a sense of freedom to it, is unshackled by convention or structure which for me, usually fails, but here it does not. Whether that is the subject matter the writing, me, both, all, I really don't know but something here just works and so I will recommend it to you all as a charming, scary, slightly surreal experience that has an almost poetic flow to the narrative that has you not only flicking forwards to see how things materialise but backwards too, to check you've made sense of it all. As I said at the beginning: strange! Three and a half stars.