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Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1)

Ali Smith

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Oct 24, 2019 Louise rated it it was ok

Shelves: literary-awards, female-authors

I finally got to read some of Ali’s Smith’s writing after hearing over recent years of her exceptional talent. She certainly is an inventive, skillful writer and parts of the first of her Seasonal Quartet Autumn I certainly enjoyed and found relevant to life today. In one outstanding passage which is more extensive than what I have quoted below, Smith writes about life in the United Kingdom post Brexit.

“All across the country, people thought it was the wrong thing. All across the country, I finally got to read some of Ali’s Smith’s writing after hearing over recent years of her exceptional talent. She certainly is an inventive, skillful writer and parts of the first of her Seasonal Quartet Autumn I certainly enjoyed and found relevant to life today. In one outstanding passage which is more extensive than what I have quoted below, Smith writes about life in the United Kingdom post Brexit.

“All across the country, people thought it was the wrong thing. All across the country, people felt it was the right thing. All across the country, people thought they’d really lost. All across the country, people thought they’d really won. All across the country, people thought they’d done the right thing and other people had done the wrong thing. All across the country, people looked up Google: what is EU? “ p 59.

The responses of Smith’s characters to the unenviable situations in which they find themselves in their now even more chaotic worlds are ever so easy to identify with and the unusual, mutually beneficial relationship which develops over many years between young Elisabeth and the considerably older Daniel Gluck is definitely a highlight of the novel.

Unfortunately, there are also numerous parts of Autumn which I found obscure and inaccessible. Interspersed with the ‘straight forward’ chapters there are many that are so ‘unusual’ that their meaning eluded me completely! An example? In chapter 1, Daniel’s thoughts are offered up as he contemplates his own perhaps death,

“He will make a green suit for himself out of leaves, and - as soon as he thinks it, a needle and some kind of gold coloured threading stuff on a little bobbin appears here in his hand, look. He is dead. Highly underrated in the modern world. Someone should tell them. Someone should let them know. Someone should be sent, scramble back to, wherever it is. Recollect her. Affect her. Neglect her. Lie detector. Film projector. Director. Collector. Objector” p 8

Because of my reservations about the cohesiveness of the novel I am undecided about whether I will venture further into Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet via the novel Winter . If I do I at least now have some idea of what to expect! ...more

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