Review
One of The Guardian’s Best Books of 2017
One of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2017
One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2017
One of the New York Times Times Critics’ Top Books of 2017
A New York Times Best Art Book of 2017 selection
“This is the place to come out and say it: 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 colours of even the pulverized world.’” —The New York Times
“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.” —The New York Times
“Layered, resonant and wittily clever, Autumn confirms that Ali Smith is a novelist for our time.” —Toronto Star
“Impressionistic and intricate . . . I can think of few writers—Virginia Woolf is one, James Salter another—so able to propel a narrative through voice alone . . . 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.” —Financial Times
“I’m reading Autumn, by Ali Smith. And 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?” —PBS News Hour
“In form and voice, Smith is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf.” —Louise Swinn, The Age
“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.” —The Independent
“Smith’s work sparkles so much that one can be blinded to the fact that its intelligence, wit, sincerity and generosity is hard-earned and technically sophisticated . . . Smith straddles the elegiac and the celebratory throughout this glorious novel. It manages to be both pertinent and perpetual; in her own words she can ‘bagatelle it as it is’.” —The Scotsman
“Smith, in reckoning with the catastrophe and wreckage of a fraught historical moment, picks through it just as precisely to reveal the beauty and the humanity buried deep below the surface.” —The Atlantic
“A gorgeously constructed puzzle that challenges the reader to solve it, with a narrative that darts back and forth in time and space.” —The Atlantic
“A poignant and subtle exploration of the way we experience time . . . Autumn is a beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams and transient realities; the ‘endless sad fragility’ of mortal lives.” —The Guardian
“In a world that seems to be crumbling around us, thank goodness we’ve still got Ali Smith telling us stories about it.” —The Pool
“Smith’s bold voice defies the toxicity of politics and offers rays of hope.” —Louise Swinn, The Age
“The material is incredibly well handled, and it is certainly one of her very best books to date; perhaps the very best, in fact. . . . The novel’s wordplay is exhilarating. Autumn is a triumph; compulsive and compelling, timely and timeless. It is a wonderful, wondrous book. When I reached the all too brief end, I was tempted to go right back to the beginning and read it all over again.” —The Literary Sisters
“To describe Ali Smith’s new book Autumn as the ‘first post-Brexit’ novel, with all the connotations of knee-jerk worthiness that evokes, is to do it a disservice. Though the book is set soon after the Leave vote, and captures the prevailing mood of uncertainty, it is less a dissection of contemporary politics than a free-floating meditation on time, memory and the transience of existence, in which ideas swirl round like fallen leaves.” —The National
“Autumn is an exploration of aging, time, memory and the enduring power of love . . . transcendent.” —Sunday Times
“It’s hard to think of another contemporary writer so adept at splicing the ordinary and the marvellous.” —Observer
‘‘It is undoubtedly Smith at her best . . . this book sets Smith’s complex creative character in stone: puckish yet elegant, angry but comforting. Long may she remain that way.” —The Times
“Autumn is humorous and heart-warming, with skilful movement between time frames . . .” —Stylist
“[The] best-selling, Man Booker-shortlisted, rave-reviewed tale . . . [that everyone] who’s anyone agrees you should read. Immediately.” —Marie Claire
“In a country apparently divided against itself, a writer such as Smith is more valuable than a whole parliament of politicians.” —Financial Times
“A masterclass in storytelling...Smith touches on the burning issues of the present day . . . an engaging and devastatingly relevant read at a time when nothing is certain . . . Smith’s beautifully written exploration of time and changing seasons will no doubt attract a legion of fans, who will eagerly await its sequel.” —Stylist
“As Ali Smith joins the dots a richly layered portrait of contemporary Britain starts to emerge.” —Mail on Sunday
“Outstanding snapshot of a country—in fact, a world—seemingly locked in a nightmarish spiral of intolerance, fear and suspicion . . . a beautiful meditation on how uneasy a powerless life can feel . . . Winter can’t come soon enough. Smith is at the very peak of her powers.” —The National
“Autumn triumphantly shows how our stories don’t belong to us alone but are part of a larger narrative of humanity and the time we live in.” —Lonesome Reader
“As ever, there is so much wonder in Ali Smith’s writing and she is an empathetic, captivating storyteller. The litheness of her language is a joy, ranging from the playful to the deadly serious, every word heartfelt and vital.” —Express UK
“Her novels reveal profound depths in unexpected places. Her love of observation and fascination with contradiction position her as one of the finest novelists from the United Kingdom.” —Signature Reads
“Autumn is clever and invigorating. The promise of three more books to come is something to be savored.” —The Washington Times
“Autumn shimmers with wit, melancholy, grief, joy, wisdom, small acts of love and, always, wonder at the seasons.” —The Boston Globe
“Autumn works convincingly as an aesthetic marker of political darkness and its repudiation.” —Chicago Review of Books
“I think that Ali Smith’s Autumn is her best work to date, and I’ve loved almost all of them. Autumn is utterly of this era, the first post-Brexit novel I’ve read, and yet I think it has a rare quality of timelessness, in that I am certain I’ll still find it moving and fascinating 20 years from now.” —The Millions
“With subtle grace, it depicts the shades of unrest in a country divided within itself, against a wider meditation on the passage of time.” —The Straits Times
“A magnificent study of the opposites, converging over sharp realities and fever dreams. . . . The chapters . . . are a kaleidoscope of dreams and reality, past and present, fact and fiction; weaved together with lightness and simplicity, revealing the mastery of prose the author commands. . . . Smith's writing works like a spell, swaying through time, narratives and landscapes till the borders begin to blur, nations and individuals collapse into each other.” —Firstpost (India)
About the Author
ALI SMITH is the author of many works of fiction, including, most recently, Summer, Spring, Winter, Autumn, Public Library and Other Stories, and How to be both, which won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize, and the Costa Novel of the Year Award. Her work has been shortlisted four times for the Booker Prize. Most recently, she won the George Orwell Prize for Fiction for Summer. Born in Inverness, Scotland, she lives in Cambridge, England.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.
Again. That’s the thing about things. They fall apart, always have, always will, it’s in their nature. So an old old man washes up on a shore. He looks like a punctured football with its stitching split, the leather kind that people kicked a hundred years ago. The sea’s been rough. It has taken the shirt off his back; naked as the day I was born are the words in the head he moves on its neck, but it hurts to. So try not to move the head. What’s this in his mouth, grit? it’s sand, it’s under his tongue, he can feel it, he can hear it grinding when his teeth move against each other, singing its sand-song: I’m ground so small, but in the end I’m all, I’m softer if I’m underneath you when you fall, in sun I glitter, wind heaps me over litter, put a message in a bottle, throw the bottle in the sea, the bottle’s made of me, I’m the hardest grain to harvest to harvest the words for the song trickle away. He is tired. The sand in his mouth and his eyes is the last of the grains in the neck of the sandglass.
Daniel Gluck, your luck’s run out at last.
He prises open one stuck eye. But –
Daniel sits up on the sand and the stones
– is this it? really? this? is death?
He shades his eyes. Very bright.
Sunlit. Terribly cold, though.
He is on a sandy stony strand, the wind distinctly harsh, the sun out, yes, but no heat off it. Naked, too. No wonder he’s cold. He looks down and sees that his body’s still the old body, the ruined knees.
He’d imagined death would distil a person, strip the rotting rot away till everything was light as a cloud.
Seems the self you get left with on the shore, in the end, is the self that you were when you went.
If I’d known, Daniel thinks, I’d have made sure to go at twenty, twenty five.
Only the good.
Or perhaps (he thinks, one hand shielding his face so if anyone can see him no one will be offended by him picking out what’s in the lining of his nose, or giving it a look to see what it is – it’s sand, beautiful the detail, the different array of colours of even the pulverized world, then he rubs it away off his fingertips) this is my self distilled. If so then death’s a sorry disappointment.
Thank you for having me, death. Please excuse me, must get back to it, life.
He stands up. It doesn’t hurt, not so much, to. Now then.
Home. Which way?
He turns a half circle. Sea, shoreline, sand, stones. Tall grass, dunes. Flatland behind the dunes. Trees past the flatland, a line of woods, all the way back round to the sea again.
The sea is strange and calm.
