What readers think of Winter, plus links to write your own review.

This book is weird. Odd. Strange. But the weirdest, oddest, strangest part of all is this: It's really, really GOOD. I just couldn't stop reading it.

This is the second in the seasonal quartet by Scottish author Ali Smith. The series begins with "Autumn" (it was shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize) and ends with "Summer," but you don't need to read them in order, unlike most series.

Taking place mostly on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day—with lots of flashbacks to earlier times, including another Christmas Day years ago—this is the story of two sisters, Iris and Sophia, as well as Sophia's son, Art. Iris and Sophia have been estranged for years. Iris is a bleeding-heart liberal who has made a life as a protestor, while Sophia, an entrepreneur, disdains this. Art and his live-in girlfriend, Charlotte, are supposed to visit his mom in Cornwall for Christmas. When he and Charlotte have a huge argument and she walks out of their London apartment, Art hires Luz, a homeless former college student from Croatia whom he meets at a bus shelter, to pretend she is Charlotte and come with him for the holiday. When they arrive late at night, quickly realizing that Sophia's mental state has frighteningly deteriorated, they call Iris in as a reinforcement—never mind that she and Sophia haven't talked for decades. What could possibly go wrong? Or put another way, what could possibly go right?

With both a lovely nod to Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol" and a not-so-subtle diatribe against Brexit, this is a sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious family soap-opera drama that had me riveted to my reading chair.

The book may be a bit quirky in places, but the writing is truly extraordinary and the imaginative storyline so tight and well-crafted that what could have been just a literary highbrow novel is also a super good and compelling read.