Book Review: Winter by Ali Smith

Winter. Bleak. Frosty wind, earth as iron, water as stone, so the old story goes...
When four people, strangers and family, converge on a fifteen-bedroom house in Cornwall for Christmas, will there be enough room for everyone?

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: 322

I have such mixed feelings about this book so I apologise in advance for the incoherent review. I've not read anything by Ali Smith before but this caught my eye in a bookshop recently so I thought I'd give it a go.
I loved the author's use of language, her choice of words is exquisite. Some of my favourite parts of the book were past recollections by the main characters. I really appreciated the rich imagery she created and the very comforting and no
stalgic feeling it brought with it.
Some parts of the book were a little too abstract for me. There's a floating head which I found quite easy to go along with but then there was a floating cliff face which suddenly appears in the dining room and this totally lost me. I've thought a lot about it but I truly cannot understand it's purpose.
The characters are a mixed bag, none of them could be described as likeable but they are interesting. The family is highly dysfunctional but this obviously just adds interest to the story.
So as you can probably tell, I'm not too sure what I made of this book, on the one hand I enjoyed Ali Smith's writing style and use of language but on the other hand some of the concepts sadly went over my head.