Ratings53
Average rating3.9
Third catch I've managed to grip on the series.
Candidly speaking, I do not feel as strong as with Summer and Spring on how the themes are correlated, and especially the way they are projected throughout the storyline. Again, typically Smith, we can see Brexit, misogyny and more current issues being scribbled and scattered from one paragraph to another paragraph in the book. Yet, as with the other books in the series, arts, the perfect means of escapism, the perfect means of dealing with life, the perfect means of emotional attachment to get through all the troubles you have. This is, again, in my perspective, very truthful and guarantee as the best means to cope with life, to seek for the ideals while the reality is never so.
Autumn, though it is the title, it was not as declining as this season ought to be as shown in the book. Perhaps for Daniel Gluck it is, that with more a century of a lifetime, his vitals are not as great as before. But this transitional period, similar to spring but in an opposite direction, from bloom to regression, from climax to falling action, from prime to decrepitude. Seemingly bleak, but is it really so?
Autumn, the season before winter, the last golden period before the arrival of darkness, when there are still more leaves to fall.
4.5
i enjoyed this one quite a bit. was a very clever book coupled with interestingly woven relationships and witty dialogue. the characters really hold everything together. once or twice the book is a little confusing (like the first few pages) but if you allow yourself to stop trying to “solve” it and sit through the discomfort, the puzzle starts to come together on its own. will have to revisit this one.
there are so many ways to take this book apart but i think this quote does it best:
“What I do when it distresses me that there's something I can't remember, is...I imagine that whatever it is I've forgotten is folded close to me, like a sleeping bird.What kind of bird? Elisabeth said.A wild bird, Daniel said. Any kind. You'll know what kind when it happens. Then, what I do is, I just hold it there, without holding it too tight, and I let it sleep. And that's that.”
:)
I finished Autumn last night but I needed to sleep on my feelings to write an accurate review of this book. I think this book was a phenomenally crafted book. Ali smith can write dream sequences and dialogue and mundane human experience with such a sharp wit and vitality that I haven't seen in any other literature I have read. I love the character of mr Gluck and his relationship with Elisabeth. I loved the peppering of historical women within the text (Christine Keeler and Pauline Boty). I loved the description of the seasons and some of the disjointed elements of this book. I would rate this book a high 4.5 as I enjoyed all the characters I encountered in this novel. The only reason it misses out on a full 5 stars it that it took me a quite a while to connect with the book overall as I was only dipping into it here and there when I had any time so the first dream sequence took me a bit to get my head around. I loved the modern and relevant elements of the book around immigrant, asylum seekers, multiculturalism and Brexit. Those bits felt so current and important. Overall I really did enjoy the book and I am happy to continue on with Ali smiths seasonal collection and the other books of hers I haven't read!
The author of this book is likely brilliant. She's a true craftswoman. It was easy to get lost in her prose, but in the end, it still left me feeling lost.
Impressionistic, and perhaps existentialist, but while skillfully done, it wasn't something that I found I really enjoyed reading either. Some really meaningful scenes, and some very humorous ones for anyone who has ever had problems at the post office trying to get a passport, and yet I put it down thankful that it was over and I could move on to different book.
This book has many different types of narration in it, but only few if them were interesting to me. The rest was, for me, a bunch of fillers that didn't resonate.