What a difficult book to review. We read for so many different reasons: to escape to another time or place; to walk in someone else’s shoes; to savour the wordplay of an artist. I think Autumn falls into this last category.
This is not a linear novel. There is no traditional story arc to be found and it jumps all over the place. It felt, to me anyway, that Smith had all these episodes of her story written on cards and she threw them up into the air then picked them up at random and placed them in a book in that order. I’m sure I’m wrong and being a bit dim!
However, there is such a beauty to this book. It is a sad and melancholy backward glance at a life. As Daniel says “We have to hope that the people who love us and who know us a little bit will in the end have seen us truly. In the end, not much else matters.”
I finished this book with tears in my eyes, and I really don’t know why - so I think Ali Smith cast some sort of spell on me with her language, that my head didn’t understand, but my heart did.