Reviews
"This splendid free-form novel--the first in a seasonally themed tetralogy--chronicles the last days of a lifelong friendship between Elisabeth, a British university lecturer in London, and her former neighbor, a centenarian named Daniel. Opening with an oblique, dreamy prologue about mortality, the novel proper sets itself against this past summer's historic Brexit vote. . . . Smith deftly juxtaposes her protagonists' physical and emotional states in the past and present, tracking Elisabeth's path from precocity to disillusionment. Eschewing traditional structure and punctuation, the novel charts a wild course through uncertain terrain, an approach that excites and surprises in equal turn. . . . Smith, always one to take risks, sees all of them pay off yet again." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "At the heart of Man Booker Prize nominee Smith's new novel is the charming friendship between a lonely girl and a kind older man who offers her a world of culture. This novel of big ideas and small pleasures is enthusiastically recommended." -- Library Journal (starred review) "A multifaceted meditation on aging, art, love, and affection . . . Smith has a gift for drawing a reader into whatever world she creates." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred) "Autumn is a beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams, and transient realities; the 'endless sad fragility' of mortal lives." --Joanna Kavenna, The Guardian (London) "Impressionistic and intricate . . . The first serious Brexit novel . . . Smith is brilliant on what the referendum has done to Britain, the fissures that have appeared in the semi-rural landscape of her mother's East Anglian home . . . At once sardonic and heartbreaking . . . I can think of few writers--Virginia Woolf is one, James Salter another--so able to propel a narrative through voice alone. Smith's use of free indirect discourse, the close-third-person style that puts the reader at once within and without her characters, means that Autumn , for all its braininess, is never difficult. Smith feels like a genial guide leading us through a torrent of ideas--about art, history, literature, feminism, memory. This is a novel that works by accretion, appearing light and playful, surface-dwelling, while all the time enacting profound changes on the reader's heart. In a country apparently divided against itself, a writer such as Smith, who makes you feel known, who seems to speak to your own private weirdnesses, is more valuable than a whole parliament of politicians." --Alex Preston, Financial Times "It is undoubtedly Smith at her best." -- The Times (London) "Uplifting and satirical . . . A beautiful meditation . . . Smith is at the very peak of her powers." -- The National "Fizzes with exuberant punning and wordplay . . . Smith's energetic, vibrant prose and topical setting . . . makes it feel so compellingly contemporary." -- The Irish Times "Destined to become a canon classic . . . Brilliant and breathtaking." -- The Irish Independent , "Ali Smith has a beautiful mind. I found this book to be unbearably moving in its playful, strange, soulful assessment of what it means to be alive at a somber time. She is speaking about sand, but she might be talking about Western civilization when she praises the 'array of colors of even the pulverized world.' . . . I have no early quibble with the novelist Sebastian Barry's comment that she may be 'Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting.'. . . There's a bit of a Harold and Maude thing going on here. . . . Autumn has a loose structure, almost like that of a prose poem. This form is perfect for Smith, because her mind will go where it wants to go. And where her mind goes, you want to follow. . . . Shrewd and dreamy, serious-but-not-solemn. . . . Spring can really hang you up the most, but for now I am struck by, and stuck on, Autumn ." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times "Delights in puns and lyric reveries. For a book about decline and disintegration, Autumn remains irrepressibly hopeful about life, something 'you worked to catch, the intense happiness of an object slightly set apart from you.'" --Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal "[Smith's] risk-taking, convention-defying fiction resembles a dizzying high-wire act performed above stiffer competition. Autumn is another breathless feat. . . . It engages acutely and beautifully with topical concerns and perennial issues. . . . Smith muses on art, literature and memory, plus the transience of life and the horror of Brexit. Some of her meditations are imbued with autumnal tones and textures (melancholy, regret, nostalgia); others are flecked with wit. As ever, Smith regales us with endless wordplay. . . . Smith's most substantial components speak volumes with poetic intensity and lucidity about an enduring companionship, a fractured Great Britain, the tragedy of aging and the cyclical nature of time. . . . Autumn is the first installment of Smith's 'Seasonal' quartet. If this brilliantly inventive and ruminative book is representative of what is to come, then we should welcome Smith's winter chill whatever the season." --Malcolm Forbes, Minneapolis Star Tribune "Autumn is a beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams, and transient realities; the 'endless sad fragility' of mortal lives." --Joanna Kavenna, The Guardian (London) "Impressionistic and intricate . . . The first serious Brexit novel . . . Smith is brilliant on what the referendum has done to Britain, the fissures that have appeared in the semi-rural landscape of her mother's East Anglian home . . . At once sardonic and heartbreaking . . . I can think of few writers--Virginia Woolf is one, James Salter another--so able to propel a narrative through voice alone. Smith's use of free indirect discourse, the close-third-person style that puts the reader at once within and without her characters, means that Autumn , for all its braininess, is never difficult. Smith feels like a genial guide leading us through a torrent of ideas--about art, history, literature, feminism, memory. This is a novel that works by accretion, appearing light and playful, surface-dwelling, while all the time enacting profound changes on the reader's heart. In a country apparently divided against itself, a writer such as Smith, who makes you feel known, who seems to speak to your own private weirdnesses, is more valuable than a whole parliament of politicians." --Alex Preston, Financial Times, "Autumn is a beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams, and transient realities; the 'endless sad fragility' of mortal lives." --Joanna Kavenna, The Guardian (London) "Impressionistic and intricate . . . The first serious Brexit novel . . . Smith is brilliant on what the referendum has done to Britain, the fissures that have appeared in the semi-rural landscape of her mother's East Anglian home . . . At once sardonic and heartbreaking . . . I can think of few writers--Virginia Woolf is one, James Salter another--so able to propel a narrative through voice alone. Smith's use of free indirect discourse, the close-third-person style that puts the reader at once within and without her characters, means that Autumn , for all its braininess, is never difficult. Smith feels like a genial guide leading us through a torrent of ideas--about art, history, literature, feminism, memory. This is a novel that works by accretion, appearing light and playful, surface-dwelling, while all the time enacting profound changes on the reader's heart. In a country apparently divided against itself, a writer such as Smith, who makes you feel known, who seems to speak to your own private weirdnesses, is more valuable than a whole parliament of politicians." --Alex Preston, Financial Times, "Uplifting and satirical. . . . A beautiful meditation. . . . The relationships and people . . . are really special. Elisabeth Demand is a thirtysomething lecturer in London with a wryly detached view of the modern world. It is the time she spends with 101-year-old former neighbour Daniel Gluck, both in the present and the past, that really hits home--their strange companionship giving Smith the chance to muse on the nature of love, art, life and, well, what the referendum has done to Britain. . . . Given this is the first of a quintet of season-based novels that explore time, Winter can't come soon enough. Smith is at the very peak of her powers." --Ben East, The National (Arts & Life) "Already acknowledged as one of the most inventive novelists writing in Britain today, with her new novel, Autumn , Ali Smith also proves herself to be one of the country's foremost chroniclers, her finger firmly on the social and political pulse. . . . In Autumn time is something the warp and weft of which can be bent on a whim: past, present and strange timeless limbos exist alongside each other. . . . One of the delights of her work is its down to earth realism. . . . Autumn displays much of the mischievous innovation that defines Smith's writing." --Lucy Scholes, The Independent (London) "A free-floating meditation on time, memory and the transience of existence, in which ideas swirl round like fallen leaves. . . . As always Smith is witty. . . . Laugh-out-loud funny. . . . [But] also dense with allusions and insights into our current malaise. . . . Teem[s] with interesting language, images and ideas." --Dana Garavelli, The National "Autumn is a beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams, and transient realities; the 'endless sad fragility' of mortal lives." --Joanna Kavenna, The Guardian (London) "Impressionistic and intricate . . . The first serious Brexit novel . . . Smith is brilliant on what the referendum has done to Britain, the fissures that have appeared in the semi-rural landscape of her mother's East Anglian home . . . At once sardonic and heartbreaking . . . I can think of few writers--Virginia Woolf is one, James Salter another--so able to propel a narrative through voice alone. Smith's use of free indirect discourse, the close-third-person style that puts the reader at once within and without her characters, means that Autumn , for all its braininess, is never difficult. Smith feels like a genial guide leading us through a torrent of ideas--about art, history, literature, feminism, memory. This is a novel that works by accretion, appearing light and playful, surface-dwelling, while all the time enacting profound changes on the reader's heart. In a country apparently divided against itself, a writer such as Smith, who makes you feel known, who seems to speak to your own private weirdnesses, is more valuable than a whole parliament of politicians." --Alex Preston, Financial Times, "This splendid free-form novel--the first in a seasonally themed tetralogy--chronicles the last days of a lifelong friendship between Elisabeth, a British university lecturer in London, and her former neighbor, a centenarian named Daniel. Opening with an oblique, dreamy prologue about mortality, the novel proper sets itself against this past summer's historic Brexit vote. . . . Smith deftly juxtaposes her protagonists' physical and emotional states in the past and present, tracking Elisabeth's path from precocity to disillusionment. Eschewing traditional structure and punctuation, the novel charts a wild course through uncertain terrain, an approach that excites and surprises in equal turn. . . . Smith, always one to take risks, sees all of them pay off yet again." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "At the heart of Man Booker Prize nominee Smith's new novel is the charming friendship between a lonely girl and a kind older man who offers her a world of culture. This novel of big ideas and small pleasures is enthusiastically recommended." -- Library Journal (starred review) "A multifaceted meditation on aging, art, love, and affection . . . Smith has a gift for drawing a reader into whatever world she creates." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred) "Autumn is a beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams, and transient realities; the 'endless sad fragility' of mortal lives." --Joanna Kavenna, The Guardian (London) "Impressionistic and intricate . . . The first serious Brexit novel . . . Smith is brilliant on what the referendum has done to Britain, the fissures that have appeared in the semi-rural landscape of her mother's East Anglian home . . . At once sardonic and heartbreaking . . . I can think of few writers--Virginia Woolf is one, James Salter another--so able to propel a narrative through voice alone. Smith's use of free indirect discourse, the close-third-person style that puts the reader at once within and without her characters, means that Autumn , for all its braininess, is never difficult. Smith feels like a genial guide leading us through a torrent of ideas--about art, history, literature, feminism, memory. This is a novel that works by accretion, appearing light and playful, surface-dwelling, while all the time enacting profound changes on the reader's heart. In a country apparently divided against itself, a writer such as Smith, who makes you feel known, who seems to speak to your own private weirdnesses, is more valuable than a whole parliament of politicians." --Alex Preston, Financial Times, "A multifaceted meditation on aging, art, love, and affection . . . Smith has a gift for drawing a reader into whatever world she creates." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred) "Uplifting and satirical. . . . A beautiful meditation. . . . The relationships and people . . . are really special. Elisabeth Demand is a thirtysomething lecturer in London with a wryly detached view of the modern world. It is the time she spends with 101-year-old former neighbour Daniel Gluck, both in the present and the past, that really hits home--their strange companionship giving Smith the chance to muse on the nature of love, art, life and, well, what the referendum has done to Britain. . . . Given this is the first of a quintet of season-based novels that explore time, Winter can't come soon enough. Smith is at the very peak of her powers." --Ben East, The National (Arts & Life) "Already acknowledged as one of the most inventive novelists writing in Britain today, with her new novel, Autumn , Ali Smith also proves herself to be one of the country's foremost chroniclers, her finger firmly on the social and political pulse. . . . In Autumn time is something the warp and weft of which can be bent on a whim: past, present and strange timeless limbos exist alongside each other. . . . One of the delights of her work is its down to earth realism. . . . Autumn displays much of the mischievous innovation that defines Smith's writing." --Lucy Scholes, The Independent (London) "A free-floating meditation on time, memory and the transience of existence, in which ideas swirl round like fallen leaves. . . . As always Smith is witty. . . . Laugh-out-loud funny. . . . [But] also dense with allusions and insights into our current malaise. . . . Teem[s] with interesting language, images and ideas." --Dana Garavelli, The National "Autumn is a beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams, and transient realities; the 'endless sad fragility' of mortal lives." --Joanna Kavenna, The Guardian (London) "Impressionistic and intricate . . . The first serious Brexit novel . . . Smith is brilliant on what the referendum has done to Britain, the fissures that have appeared in the semi-rural landscape of her mother's East Anglian home . . . At once sardonic and heartbreaking . . . I can think of few writers--Virginia Woolf is one, James Salter another--so able to propel a narrative through voice alone. Smith's use of free indirect discourse, the close-third-person style that puts the reader at once within and without her characters, means that Autumn , for all its braininess, is never difficult. Smith feels like a genial guide leading us through a torrent of ideas--about art, history, literature, feminism, memory. This is a novel that works by accretion, appearing light and playful, surface-dwelling, while all the time enacting profound changes on the reader's heart. In a country apparently divided against itself, a writer such as Smith, who makes you feel known, who seems to speak to your own private weirdnesses, is more valuable than a whole parliament of politicians." --Alex Preston, Financial Times "It is undoubtedly Smith at her best." --Melissa Katsoulis, The Times (London) "Fizzes with exuberant punning and wordplay . . . Smith'senergetic, vibrant prose and topical setting . . . makes it feel so compellingly contemporary."--Houman Barekat, The Irish Times "Destined to become a canon classic . . . Brilliant and breathtaking." --Tanya Sweeney, The Irish Independent, "Ali Smith has a beautiful mind. I found this book to be unbearably moving in its playful, strange, soulful assessment of what it means to be alive at a somber time. She is speaking about sand, but she might be talking about Western civilization when she praises the ''array of colors of even the pulverized world.'' . . . I have no early quibble with the novelist Sebastian Barry''s comment that she may be ''Scotland''s Nobel laureate-in-waiting.''. . . There''s a bit of a Harold and Maude thing going on here. . . . Autumn has a loose structure, almost like that of a prose poem. This form is perfect for Smith, because her mind will go where it wants to go. And where her mind goes, you want to follow. . . . Shrewd and dreamy, serious-but-not-solemn. . . . Spring can really hang you up the most, but for now I am struck by, and stuck on, Autumn ." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times "The first of a projected quartet, Autumn hovers around the season of harvest and final things, but the possibility of transformation is also very much in the air. . . . A novel that, under all its erudition, narrative antics, wit and wordplay, is a wonder of deep and accommodating compassion." --Ellen Akins, The Washington Post "Could Scottish writer Ali Smith be J.D. Salinger''s natural heir? It''s not as preposterous as it sounds. Not since Salinger''s plucky English orphan, Esm, soothed an American sergeant''s no-longer-intact faculties at the end of World War II has a writer so artfully and heartrendingly captured the two-way lifeline between preternaturally wise children (mainly girls) and young-at-heart gentle souls (mainly men) who forge special friendships that have nothing predatory or Lolita-ish about them. . . . Autumn again knits together an astonishing array of seemingly disparate subjects, including mortality, unconventional love, Shakespeare''s Tempest , a rhyming advertisement jingle, and the xenophobia underlying both Nazism and current populist neo-nationalism. . . . Smith is better at making tight connections than most airlines. . . . Free spirits and the lifeforce of art--along with kindness, hope, and a readiness ''to be above and beyond the foul even when we''re up to our eyes in it''--are, when you get down to it, what Smith champions in this stirring novel." --Heller McAlpin, NPR "Delights in puns and lyric reveries. For a book about decline and disintegration, Autumn remains irrepressibly hopeful about life, something ''you worked to catch, the intense happiness of an object slightly set apart from you.''" --Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal "[Elisabeth and Daniel] are each other''s favorite people in the world, even though their paths cross only intermittently and he is 69 years old than she is. . . . Their extraordinary friendship forms the moral center of this beautiful, subtle work, the seventh novel by Smith, who consistently produces some of Britain''s most exciting, ambitious and moving writing. . . . Smith''s writing is fearless and nonlinear, exploring the connectivity of things: between the living and the dead, the past and the present, art and life. She conveys time almost as it if is happening all at once, like Picasso trying to record an image from every angle simultaneously. . . . Smith''s writing is light and playful, deceptively simple, skipping along like a stone on the surface of a lake, brimming with humanity and bending, despite everything, toward hope. . . . The best parts in Autumn , the most moving parts, the transcendent parts, come during Elisabeth and Daniel''s conversations about words, art, life, books, the imagination, how to observe, how to be. Theirs is a conversation that begins mid-paragraph and never ends." --Sarah Lyall, The New York Times Book Review
