Autumn

By: Ali Smith

Narrated by: Melody Grove

From the Man Booker-shortlisted and Baileys Prize-winning author of How to Be Both, a breathtakingly inventive new novel - about aging, time, love, and stories themselves - that launches an extraordinary quartet of books called Seasonal. Listeners love Ali Smith's novels for their peerless innovation and their joyful celebration of language and life. Her newest, Autumn, has all of these qualities in spades, and - good news for fans! - is the first installment in a quartet. Seasonal, comprised of four standalone books, separate yet interconnected and cyclical (as are the seasons), explores what time is, how we experience it, and the recurring markers in the shapes our lives take and in our ways with narrative. Fusing Keatsian mists and mellow fruitfulness with the vitality, the immediacy, and the color hit of Pop Art, Autumn is a witty excavation of the present by the past. The novel is a stripped-branches take on popular culture and a meditation, in a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, what harvest means.

©2016 Ali Smith (P)2016 W.F. Howes

Critic reviews

"Ali Smith's moving, dreamlike novel, the first in a planned quartet, is made even lovelier by narrator Melody Grove's consummate narration.... Grove never loses the plot's twisting thread, confidently guiding the listener as the story moves from the present day to 1960s London to WWII France. She imbues her performance with warmth and humor that help ground the story, and her slight variations in tone and accent make the characters easily discernable." (AudioFile)

Cool

What an incredibly cool and original book!! "She said"- I loved it. Such a stageable novel. Ali Smith rocks :).

A

A Book For Our Times

This is a lovely book. I loved reading the print version and listening to it as well on Audible. It mirrors the puzzlement of the xenophobia sweeping the West. But it’s told in a kind and often funny voice. Autumn is the best book I’ve read in years.

Lyrical and touching

Ali Smith has an evocative, imagistic way with words; not a plot-driven book but she captures a full spectrum of emotions in this “love” story between a woman and the courtly neighbor 70 years her senior.
Narrator is tops!

A masterpiece

Ali Smith weaves words and story together in a way that grip you from beginning to end.

Lovely book, beautifully read

This is such a moving book, with an exquisite reading. I have listened to it 3 times. It is one of the most beguiling deliveries I have heard.