AUTUMN (2017)

Autumn by Ali Smith

This is an amazing book touching on many things that make up our lives in today's world.

I would never have picked up AUTUMN if it hadn't been the choice for our March Book Gathering.

Someone wrote in their Goodreads review, "It's a book of fragments that fit together in odd arrangements." Not all readers will be comfortable with this, but the words are poetry.

FIRST SENTENCE: "It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times."

THE STORY: Set in the United Kingdom, Daniel and Elizabeth began becoming friends when she was a young girl and he an old man. He shares his view of life with her as they both age into a world that has changed. 

From the book jacket: ". . .Autumn is an unforgettable story about aging and time and love and stories themselves." 

QUOTES: "I'm tired of the news. I'm tired of the way it makes things spectacular that aren't, and deals so simplistically with what's truly appalling."

"Always be reading something, he said. Even when we're not physically reading. How else will we read the world? Think of it as a constant."

"The moment got longer. It became less of a moment, more of a while."

"She hadn't known that proximity to lies, even just reading about them, could make you feel so ill."

WHAT I THOUGHT: A seasonal quartet, I look forward to reading Winter and the beyond. Every once in a while, a book surprises.

BOTTOM LINE: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. That is not to say that everyone will enjoy or appreciate the abstractness of this Man Booker Prize Finalist.

Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (October 17, 2017)
ISBN-10: 1101969946
ISBN-13:  978-1101969946