Autumn (Smith)

Autumn  (Seasonal Quartet)
Ali Smith, 2016 (U.S., 2017)
Knopf Doubleday
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781101969946


Summary
Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

Two old friends—Daniel, a centenarian, and Elisabeth, born in 1984 — look to both the future and the past as the United Kingdom stands divided by a historic, once-in-a-generation summer. Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand-in-hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll round, as ever.
 
A luminous meditation on the meaning of richness and harvest and worth, Autumn is the first installment of Ali Smith’s Seasonal quartet, and it casts an eye over our own time: Who are we? What are we made of?

Shakespearean jeu d’esprit, Keatsian melancholy, the sheer bright energy of 1960s pop art. Wide-ranging in time-scale and light-footed through histories, Autumn is an unforgettable story about aging and time and love — and stories themselves. (From the publisher.)