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❤️‍🩹 Writing the story that younger me wishes she could have read 📚 Adding to my ever-growing TBR 💭 Probably overthinking something
🚫 No genAI

$AUTUMN 🍂 | ALI SMITH The first book in my seasonal Ali Smith buddy read, and what a gorgeous place to begin. At the centre of Autumn is the friendship between Elisabeth and Daniel, separated by generations but connected through art, stories, curiosity and a kind of deep, sustaining companionship. Their relationship gave the novel its warmth, but what I loved most was the way Smith places that intimacy against something much larger: a Britain fractured by Brexit, suspicion and bureaucracy, with the present constantly rubbing up against other moments in British and European history. The Profumo Affair, Pauline Boty, pop art, political division, borders, identity. Smith lets history echo rather than sit neatly in the past, so that Brexit becomes not an isolated rupture but another moment in a much longer story about who gets to belong, who gets listened to, and what a country chooses to remember. Formally, this was such a pleasure too. The analepsis, the dreamlike passages, the slips between memory and reality, the strange associative leaps. It feels fragmented without ever feeling careless, more like memory itself: one image opening a door into another. And throughout it all, that extraordinary juxtaposition of beauty and brutality. Art. Friendship. Nature. Freedom. Alongside xenophobia, hostility, borders, institutional absurdity and the uglier edges of modern Britain. It’s a book about division, but also about the things that resist it. About continuing to notice beauty. Continuing to make connections. Continuing to imagine something better. Thank you to all of my lovely reading buddies. A genuinely gorgeous reading experience, and I’m already very glad we’ve decided to read all four books as the seasons change. 🍁 Next stop: Winter. ❄️$

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Doubling up the posts today…it’s ’cosy blankets’ for day 17 and I also finished my buddy read of ‘Autumn’ by Ali Smith and so wanted to share my thoughts…

The book focuses on two characters, Daniel and Elisabeth, and their friendship which is looked back on as Elisabeth reads to ageing Daniel at his bedside. Theirs is a warm, funny and poignant human connection and is juxtaposed with the backdrop of post-Brexit Britain and its loss of human connection, as people deal with more hostility, bureaucracy and uncertainty in the wake of the new political landscape.

There is a lyricism and a brilliance with which Ali Smith plays with language and form that I loved and it’s written in a non-linear way echoing how memory and dreams work which serves the storyline well. Sometimes the seemingly unrelated thoughts and themes were hard to follow but the multilayered storytelling is clever and the prose is stunning in its originality. It is definitely one of those wonderful novels where you can enrich the reading experience by discussing it in a buddy read and by reading more about it afterwards to gain a deeper understanding. I’m looking forward to continuing the series with ‘Winter’ next and seeing where it takes us.
A BIG thank you to the lovely people I was able to read this with and chat to!🫶
And a very happy Saturday to you all!!! What are you up today? I’ve got tea and cake this morning and then hopefully playing with books this afternoon!😂❤️

#booktoberchallenge #autumnread #buddyreadreview

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hello autumn 🍂

My favourite season and potentially a new favourite read, a hundred pages in and I’m enjoying this so much. I was captivated from the first few pages, the writing is sublime and I’m already so invested in the characters. So much funnier than I was expecting too!

Can’t wait to read more and so lovely to do it with a group of bookish friends as a buddy read too. 🧡

#bookstagram #buddyread #autumn #autumnreads #bookrecs

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Jean

@jean.ryam.tera