About the Book
Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. That's what it felt like for Keats in 1819. How about Autumn 2016? Daniel is a century old. Elisabeth, born in 1984, has her eye on the future. The United Kingdom is in pieces, 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. Ali Smith's new novel is a meditation on a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, on what harvest means. This first in a seasonal quartet casts an eye over our own time. Who are we? What are we made of? Shakespearian jeu d'esprit, Keatsian melancholy, the sheer bright energy of 1960s Pop art- the centuries cast their eyes over our own history-making. Here's where we're living. Here's time at its most contemporaneous and its most cyclic. From the imagination of the peerless Ali Smith comes a shape-shifting series, wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories, and a story about ageing and time and love and stories themselves. Here comes Autumn.
About the Author :
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of Free Love and Other Stories, Like, Other Stories and Other Stories, Hotel World, The Whole Story and Other Stories, The Accidental, Girl Meets Boy, The First Person and Other Stories, There but for the, Artful, How to be both, and Public library and other stories. Hotel World was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize and The Accidentalwas shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Orange Prize. How to be both won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and the Folio Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.
Review :
I love Ali Smith's writing, and I've been keeping Autumn for an end-of-book holiday treat
In a country apparently divided against itself, a writer such as Smith is more valuable than a whole parliament of politicians
Bold and brilliant, dealing with the body blow of Brexit to offer us something rare: hope
Humour, grace, solace...A light-footed meditation on mortality, mutability and how to keep your head in troubled times
Transcendental writing about art, death and all the dimensions of love. It's not so much 'reading between the lines' as being blinded by the light between the lines - in a good way
The novel of the year is obviously Ali Smith's Autumn, which managed the miracle of making at least a kind of sense out of post-Brexit Britain
Autumn is a beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams and transient realities
Experimental, thematically complex, associative, time-juggling, powered by a crazed and energetic curiosity
Pure literary magic
Puckish, yet elegant; angry, but comforting. Long may she Remain that way
A wonderfully risky project...an ambitious, multi-layered creation...an energising and uplifting story
A moving exploration of the intricacies of the imagination, a sly teasing-out of a host of big ideas and small revelations, all hovering around a timeless quandary: how to observe, how to be
I wonder: How does she manage to so wonderfully weave in and out of time, to layer time, while creating something that feels like it was written this morning after she read today's newspaper?
Publisher's description. Autumn 2016: the UK is in pieces, divided by a historic once-in-a-generation summer. Love is won, love is lost. The seasons roll round as ever. From the imagination of the peerless Ali Smith comes a shape-shifting, light-footed, time-travelling novel. This is a story about right now, this minute; about ageing and time and love and stories themselves. Here comes Autumn.
Transcendental writing about art, death, political lies, trees and all the dimensions of love
Unbearably moving, shrewd and dreamy, playful, strange [and] soulful...[An] assessment of what it means to be alive...Ali Smith has a beautiful mind and where her mind goes, you want to follow...I am struck by, and stuck on, Autumn.
Fantastic writing, big ideas and generosity of spirit
The first serious Brexit novel
She is, of course, Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting
Autumn is a beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams and transient realities
