Autumn

Autumn by Ali Smith is set in England after the Brexit referendum  which has cast a depressive pall over the country. The story, if it can be called that, moves back and forth in time in a non-linear stream-of-consciousness fashion. At its centre is the friendship between a little girl named Elisabeth (now grown up) and her elderly neighbour, Daniel, who is now 101 years old and residing in a care facility. Elisabeth's single mother appears throughout the novel as does Pauline Boty, a real life British pop artist who celebrated female sexuality and died at 28. There are also references to Christine Keeler, a young prostitute who played a central role in the Profumo spy scandal in the 1960s (which I am old enough to remember). Daniel slips in and out of consciousness and his end of life dreams tell us about the man he used to be.
This slim, impressionistic novel is about being female, the power of art and, though it has a dark feel, it is also about hope. "We have to hope, Daniel was saying, 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."

It is the first book in a seasonal quartet. The last is the recently published Summer which has received interesting reviews. I decided that if I were going to read it I'd better read the first three as well. This is not the sort of book that would ordinarily appeal to me but Ali Smith creates strings of disparate images with few words and ties them together wonderfully into something coherent.