Every once in a while, I discover an author and find I need to read the entirety of their canon. The last writer this happened with, in April last year, was Haruki Murakami, who I discovered as I prepared for my first trip to Japan: I quickly read everything I could get my hands on, devouring the strangeness and bleakness and other-worldliness of it all. Before Murakami, it was Neil Gaiman, who I fell for thanks to the recommendation of The Graveyard Book and quickly became a security blanket, his Good Omens (written with Terry Pratchett) following me from home to home, country to country, place to place.
And now? Now it’s Ali Smith.
I first discovered Ali Smith at Christmas, when I devoured Girl Meets Boy in an afternoon. I was immediately struck by the way in which Smith uses language in a way that feels wholly novel, and while at times, I found it alienating, it was the antithesis of that Groucho-Marxism: I wanted to be a member of this club.
I picked up The Accidental next and found to my utter relief that it was not nearly as difficult to grasp as my first choice. Relying on a far more traditional narrative structure, The Accidental managed nevertheless yet another unique way with words and the English language in general.
All this time, I had been eagerly awaiting my turn to check out Autumn, the first of Smith’s seasonal quartet, for which I believe I was 13th on the waiting list at my local library. It’s pure good fortune that led to my receiving it just as summer fades into fall, and, perhaps thanks to my experience with Smith’s unique voice, I found myself warming to it even more quickly than I had the previous two.
Autumn has been hailed as many things: a Brexit book, an atypical love story, “a book with a hole in the middle,” a book about the end of one century and the catastrophic beginning of another. A book of the times. It is all of these things and more: it is atmospheric and layered; it is approachable and yet one of those books that no two people will glean the same thing from.
All I can do is urge you to read it yourself, and in the meantime, I will leave you with this little tidbit, which is currently rivaling Vonnegut for my all-time favorite, no-context-needed quote from literature:
Always be reading something, he said. Even when we’re not physically reading. How else will we read the world?