A Man Booker Prize Finalist, the first novel in Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet is an unforgettable story about aging and time and love—and stories themselves. A Washington Post Notable Book and One of the 10 Best Books of the Year from The New York Times Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Two old friends—Daniel, a centenarian, and Elisabeth, born in 1984—look to both the future and … Elisabeth, born in 1984—look to both the future and the past as the United Kingdom stands divided by a historic, once-in-a-generation summer. Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand-in-hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll round, as ever.
A luminous meditation on the meaning of richness and harvest and worth, Autumn is the first installment of Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet, and it casts an eye over our own time: Who are we? What are we made of? Shakespearean jeu d’esprit, Keatsian melancholy, the sheer bright energy of 1960s pop art. Autumn is wide-ranging in time-scale and light-footed through histories.
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Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Autumn is a slice of life book. The story revolves around two persons. Daniel is a 100-year-old man who was the neighbor and used to babysit Elisabeth. Through the story, we go into the present and past of how their relationship was formed and consolidated. This strong unlikely friendship was created that nobody could understand including Elisabeth’s mother.
I feel the story started very strongly and I was impressed by the first two or three chapters. But I feel things got slower and slower later. The book has lots of political and social messages that are told through the narration or the situations the characters faced. There are funny situations in the story that will make you raise your eyebrows. The writing style was really good but I feel jumping from a period to another randomly somehow killed the immersion of the story for me. You read in a chapter that Elisabeth is twenty years old and in the next, she is four and so on. The nonlinear prose confused me at times as to whether this was present or past that I was reading. It gave me the impression that the story was not focused enough and at times all over the place. Autumn is the first book in the Seasons series. It is a good book but I expected to like it more than I did. I am not sure whether I want to continue with the series. I know many readers and friends loved at least the first book. I might borrow the next one from the library at some point but as of now, it is not something that I would like to read immediately.
Very complex book. Dan keeps asking, “What are you reading?” , a question for the reader as well. I didn’t always know. But I want to.
Confusing at first, but beautifully and entertainingly original. The non-linear plot wanders from generation to generation, includes peripheral stories about the artist Pauline Boty as well as Christine Keeler, so keeps you guessing as to where and how they relate to Daniel, the old man who is a life long friend of the main character, Elisabeth.
I have no recommendation at all. Totally disappointing! Could not go beyong the first 10 pages!
I loved it
Brilliant writing. However, I feel as though I read the author’s notebook, not a novel
I found it uncomfortable to read…kind of stream of consciousness… Just not of my taste..
This book is certainly different to your average factionary tale! In the most positive sense I found this book utterly mad! It is about imagination and it sparked mine fully.
It is about the life of a very old man, Daniel. It is about the life of a young woman, Elisabeth. The little things that are actually not little things at all really come out bit by bit so that by the end of the book we know them and understand them better for knowing these things that we did not know in the beginning, events and people in their lives that are kept from us initially.
Elisabeth and Daniel are like friends, one another’s confidant, but he is also a father figure, and towards the end I felt they could have been lovers, had they been young at the same time. This book is like reading a work of art and truly defies convention.
Gillian Dance
A funny, deep, pun-soaked meditation of a novel, that is at once a critique of England at its current crossroads and a novel of ideas, about art, culture, friendship and the ways we see, remember, imagine. Original and interesting.