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AUTUMN 🍂 | ALI SMITH

The first book in my seasonal Ali Smith buddy read, and what a gorgeous place to begin.

At the centre of Autumn is the friendship between Elisabeth and Daniel, separated by generations but connected through art, stories, curiosity and a kind of deep, sustaining companionship. Their relationship gave the novel its warmth, but what I loved most was the way Smith places that intimacy against something much larger: a Britain fractured by Brexit, suspicion and bureaucracy, with the present constantly rubbing up against other moments in British and European history.

The Profumo Affair, Pauline Boty, pop art, political division, borders, identity. Smith lets history echo rather than sit neatly in the past, so that Brexit becomes not an isolated rupture but another moment in a much longer story about who gets to belong, who gets listened to, and what a country chooses to remember.

Formally, this was such a pleasure too. The analepsis, the dreamlike passages, the slips between memory and reality, the strange associative leaps. It feels fragmented without ever feeling careless, more like memory itself: one image opening a door into another.

And throughout it all, that extraordinary juxtaposition of beauty and brutality. Art. Friendship. Nature. Freedom. Alongside xenophobia, hostility, borders, institutional absurdity and the uglier edges of modern Britain.

It’s a book about division, but also about the things that resist it. About continuing to notice beauty. Continuing to make connections. Continuing to imagine something better.

Thank you to all of my lovely reading buddies. A genuinely gorgeous reading experience, and I’m already very glad we’ve decided to read all four books as the seasons change. 🍁

Next stop: Winter. ❄️