Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Page Count: 263
I had an underlying anxiety as I began reading ‘Autumn’, Smith’s first novel in her ‘seasonal quartet’. Although I found Smith’s writing uniquely charming and vibrant the first time I read her earlier this year, I ended up calling her Women’s Prize winning novel ‘How to Be Both’ ‘a bit too playful’. Precisely because I had a hard time understanding it, and with an irritated feeling, it became harder for me to enjoy her playfulness with words uninterruptedly.
However, after finishing ‘Autumn’, I’ve come to realize that my irritation and anxiety with reading Smith was more particular to her novel ‘How to Be Both’ and its content than with her writing in general. While ‘How to Be Both’ was a dual-narrative story, one taking place in the contemporary world and one in the past, ‘Autumn’ is simpler and set only in the contemporary UK with a bit of its story taking place in 1980s and onwards.
It is a story of friendship between an old man, now in his hundreds, Daniel Gluck and a young artist Elisabeth ‘with a s’. We get to know how an already old Daniel Gluck became Elisabeth’s neighbor in the 1980s when she was 7 years old, and while Elisabeth wanted to meet Daniel and ask him questions for her school project ‘Portrait in words of our next neighbor’, her mother was against it for Mr. Gluck was old and probably a foreigner. Anyways, Elisabeth’s mother soon starts to see Mr. Gluck as a cost-free babysitter for her daughter when she goes away, and that’s how a continuing and growing friendship starts between Daniel and Elisabeth.
In the present-day 2014, we see Elisabeth now grown-up and applying for her passport renewal, which becomes Smith’s first of the many commentaries on topics about modern-day UK and her facing issues. Daniel has now sold his house and is residing in a care-providing house, mostly asleep, and receives regular visits from Elisabeth who reads him books even though he’s asleep.
Reading Smith’s ‘Autumn’ I felt happy for multiple reasons: its beautiful, simple and important story, a promising start to a what now is a complete and well praised quartet, and in knowing that reading Smith can purely and uninterruptedly be fun. Although the contemporary issues woven into this novel are mostly relevant to UK, some parts of it do resonate with general readers, like public intolerance, refugee crisis, and increasing individuality leading towards hatred and lack of sympathy and empathy.
As the name suggest, there are many references to the changing seasons and their impacts of the mood of the story and I’m curious as to how each of these seasonal books would relate weather with a story. Art is also a big part of this novel, and there’s a story about Pauline Boty, a lost female artist, through which Smith voices her views on feminism and gender discriminality.
The character of Daniel is both a wise and calming presence in the novel, and Elisabeth’s character completes the story with her loyalty to their friendship and her habit of always-reading, as Daniel always told her to. But what’s most adorable and unique to reading Smith is her prose. It witty, different, vibrant, playful, spontaneous, sometimes rhyming, sometimes weird, but always amusing and pleasant.
At the condition of being able to break free of one’s accustomness to reading conventional or normal prose, it is an absolute joy to read Smith and her playfulness with words.
Ratings: 4.5/5 **** December 5, 2020_