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Autumn
Autumn
Autumn
Audiobook4 hours

Autumn

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

From the author of the monumental My Struggle series, Karl Ove Knausgaard, one of the masters of contemporary literature and a genius of observation and introspection, comes the first in a new autobiographical quartet based on the four seasons 28 August. Now, as I write this, you know nothing about anything, about what awaits you, the kind of world you will be born into. And I know nothing about you. I want to show you our world as it is now: the door, the floor, the water tap and the sink, the garden chair close to the wall beneath the kitchen window, the sun, the water, the trees. You will come to see it in your own way, you will experience things for yourself and live a life of your own, so of course it is primarily for my own sake that I am doing this: showing you the world, little one, makes my life worth living. Autumn begins with a letter Karl Ove Knausgaard writes to his unborn daughter, showing her what to expect of the world. He writes one short piece per day, describing the material and natural world with the precision and mesmerizing intensity that have become his trademark. He describes with acute sensitivity daily life with his wife and children in rural Sweden, drawing upon memories of his own childhood to give an inimitably tender perspective on the precious and unique bond between parent and child. The sun, wasps, jellyfish, eyes, lice-the stuff of everyday life is the fodder for his art. Nothing is too small or too vast to escape his attention. This beautifully illustrated book is a personal encyclopaedia on everything from chewing gum to the stars. Through close observation of the objects and phenomena around him, Knausgaard shows us how vast, unknowable and wondrous the world is.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 22, 2017
ISBN9781501966330
Autumn
Author

Karl Ove Knausgaard

Karl Ove Knausgaard was born in Norway in 1968. My Struggle has won countless international literary awards and has been translated into at least fifteen languages. Knausgaard lives in Sweden with his wife and four children.

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Rating: 3.912844131192661 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It’s about memories, art, love of the aching, tender, unrequited kind, all against the backdrop of the cruelty of post-Brexit (or post-Trump) uncivil society. Replete with the lovely, lyrical wordplay that I adore Ali Smith for.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A little more modern writing than I’m used to, but I liked it quite a bit. A lot of humor and puns, always appreciated by this reader. I’ll be taking a look at her next book!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I very nearly bailed on this novel when I realized it was more of a stream-of-consciousness style. But I am so glad I stayed with it. Interesting how the real stories of a mostly forgotten 1960s female artist and also Brexit are integrated into the lives of fictional characters Elisabeth and her elderly friend Daniel. I‘ll definitely seek more of Ali Smith (a couple of her books— not this one— are on the "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die" list).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is a hard to summarize - it covers a lot of ground.

    A 101 year old man is dying in a nursing home. He's visited by a young woman, whom he befriended when she was a child. Their story is told in retrospective flash backs and it's a delightfully innocent relationship. They discuss "Arty art" and stories and how to think and read and live a life.

    Through the story we also see the unfolding of the young woman's relationship with her mother. In the early parts of the book, we see the mother through the lens of an irritated teenager. Later in the book we see a more adult and likely more accurate view of the mother.

    Other themes are handled (in my opinion) in a very heavy-handed fashion. Feminism and sexism in the art world are presented without nuance. I honestly feel like I learned nothing new about feminism or sexism reading this book, and yet it was a overwhelming theme.

    A less major theme was how Brexit is just like the Holocaust. Major eyeroll over this. The Holocaust was state-sanctioned genocide. Brexit was a peaceful political division (peaceful as in "not war"), and as far as I can tell, no death camps have been set up as part of Brexit. I find the whole comparison of Brexit to the Holocaust to be childish and lazy. I'm sure Brexit could be much more accurately compared to any number of other historical events.

    On a positive note, I found myself fascinated by Pauline Boty, British pop artist in the 1960s, as well as the Profumo Affair which are both featured prominently in the book. I had a wonderful time looking up both Boty and Profumo and really enjoyed learning more about both.

    This is the first book in a quartet.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    There are some beautiful passages, and I enjoy the relationship and developing stories of Daniel and Elisabeth, but overall, this was not a book I enjoyed. I listened to the audio and there were too many passages that were just litanies of things and thoughts. I felt as if Smith was just trying to be too clever and stream-of-consciousy, and it really didn't workI enjoyed her ongoing struggles to get her passport!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Elisabeth’s quirky and neglectful mother often leaves her young daughter to her own devices.Elisabeth becomes fast friends with her neighbor, the elderly Mr Gluck, and is introduced to a new world that opens her eyes to art, philosophy and conversation.As she grows up, she loses touch, but on a return visit home, she learns that Mr Gluck is now in a care home. He is no longer verbal, but Elisabeth visits him and revisits their friendship in a stream of consciousness of wonderful memories. At the same time she is still dealing with her unorthodox mother. There are many insights on aging – how the autumn of one’s life is green and golden and doesn’t look much different than summer. But as autumn progresses, winter approaches.This is the first published in a quartet of books named for the seasons.I had not read Ali Smith previously. I plan to go on with the quartet and also perhaps other of Ali’s Smith’s work. It’s always fun to find a new author.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I don’t know. Honestly, this was such a jumble of literary devices that didn’t always work together and I felt like I was struggling to get my bearings every now and then. I commend the effort, I guess, but Autumn doesn’t work for me. I don’t think it’s the reader’s job to make sense of a novel.It’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy parts. There were some bits I really wish had been expanded to the full novel. But the mix of prose was jarring. I read Winter as well and felt pretty much the same. I don’t think Ali Smith and I are a match.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I have found myself captivated by Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet of novels (as I’ve been reading them in the order that they were released) and currently I’ve just started the last volume, Summer. In the beginning there was Autumn, and she introduced a fascinating style where she writes about how none of us are sure about how other people are experiencing time. She has created a book that seemed free of any hard and fast storyline. The form is much looser than a typical book’s group of characters marching through time as the clock and the calendar move forward. This luscious writing style is far beyond a few flashbacks here and there, and it seemed odd at first, but it then jelled for me, as it created a series of impressions and a general feeling for the book that quickly grew on me, capturing my attention. Since I’m still reading the last part of this four-book work, I’ve pretty much remained just a simple reader and have not analyzed or pondered much about how she accomplishes all that she does in these books, I’m just going with the flow. I am entirely fascinated with how this literary experiment will end, but as my late wife, Vicky, continually pushed me, just experience the experience, don’t overthink it. Digression. Say you’re traveling somewhere new, you have the choice to get all anal and attempt to capture everything with your camera, without really taking it all in with your own naked eyes. Or, you can choose to be in the moment, in that place, and take it all in like humans have done as long as we have walked the planet. Many, many years ago I went to the Grand Canyon, right after I’d gotten a large zoom lens for my 35mm camera. I shot a whole heap of film, focusing closer, and closer, and closer to spectacular formations. But it was only when I ran out of color film— just as the canyon started to display its spectacular sunset colors—that I quickly took just a few black and white shots, put my camera down, and then just looked and felt the pure awe of the moment. The large crowd of people standing along the canyon’s edge became almost magically and spiritually quiet. For years I would look at those B&W shots and remember how I was so stunned by the colors of that special moment in my life. That awe was the very opposite of me and my camera zooming in again and again, becoming a little less human with each adjustment of the lens. I’m a firm believer in being human on the edge of the world. I’m just saying. Back to August, many of the reviews were mixed as people grappled for how to see, how to summarize this book. [What lens should they use?] At first, I was confused, but then I realized that it was a very special opportunity, and that I should just read on, and let it all happen. The novel got a lot of attention when it came out as the “first Brexit novel” and in the end, made The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2017. The book begins with Daniel Gluck dreaming that he is young again, or that he is possibly dead. There’s a relationship between Daniel and Elisabeth Demand that pops up throughout the book. Even though he’s sixty-nine years older than she is, their connection is very special. Initially, Elisabeth’s mother was wary of Elisabeth hanging out with their elderly neighbor. To me this relationship was the heart of the book, as we see them at many different points in time. Here's some curious dialogue from their first meeting. “Very pleased to meet you,” Daniel says the first time, to the 8-year-old Elisabeth. “Finally.” “How do you mean, finally?” Elisabeth asks. “We only moved here six weeks ago.” “The lifelong friends,” Daniel says. “We sometimes wait a lifetime for them.” They continue to have fascinating conversations all through the book, touching on many subjects, where they both educate and entertain each other from their very distinctive viewpoints. Their interchanges are almost a world in themselves. A loose connection with time fills the book, as this book could be the poster child for nonlinear writing. Smith will drop lines like “A minute ago it was June.” “Now the weather is September.” As one reviewer wrote about Smith, she is “exploring the connectivity of things: between the living and the dead, the past and the present, art and life. She conveys time almost as if it is happening all at once.” Also writing that Smith’s style is, ‘light and playful, deceptively simple, skipping along like a stone on the surface of a lake, brimming with humanity and bending, despite everything, toward hope." This is one of those books that you’ll connect with and read with a fascination and an impatience to see what’s happening, or it simply won’t work for you. As someone over-the-moon for these books, I say to keep reading, you just might discover an incredibly unique world in these books—and just how often do you get a chance for that?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    [Autumn] is the story of Elisabeth, a young woman living in Scotland, and her relationship with 100-year-old Daniel. As she sits by his bedside in an assisted living facility, she reminisces about their relationship. There is little in the way of plot, but much in the way of reflection and humor. My favorite parts of the book are the scenes between Daniel and Elisabeth when she was a child. I would have loved to have had a mentor/friend like Daniel, who could open up the worlds of books, art, and storytelling. Elisabeth has no friends her own age, is not challenged academically, and receives only cursory care from her mother; but in Daniel she finds all of these.I also enjoyed the humor in the depictions of Elisabeth′s everyday adult life. Her efforts to get her passport submitted for renewal at the post office were especially funny. Overall the writing is lyrical, yet sharp and clear, not flowery. It would have been a quick read for me, if not for the references to European current events. Some I understood, like the vote for Scottish independence and Brexit. Others I had to stop and google, for instance, about Pauline Boty, as well as Christine Keeler and the Profumo scandal. Overall I enjoyed the book and have requested [Winter] from the library.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This opening novel in the Seasonal Quartet focuses on Daniel, an elderly man about whom we learn much more in future volumes, and Elisabeth, his next door neighbor who is a young girl when they first meet. We see Daniel and Elisabeth as they interact during her childhood/teens, and then years later when Elisabeth is a young woman is visiting Daniel in a nursing home. Despite what seems to be the lack of a strong plot, there is actually quite a lot going on. Once again there is a lot about art, and I particularly enjoyed learning about Pauline Boty, a British pop artist from the 60's I had never heard of, who died tragically young, and now seems to be having something of a resurgence.Lots of the book is narrated in a somewhat stream of consciousness way, somewhat surreal and hallucinatory (as in the dreams of a 101 year old man on his deathbed). There's a lot of humor here too, Elisabeth's encounters with the bureaucracy being particularly funny. I think if I had read this first, I wouldn't have hesitated to commit to the whole quartet.Recommended.4 stars
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is an ambitious lyrical novel that examines Brexit and the impacts of nationalism upon a diverse and cosmopolitan populace. Once you adjust to the style, the book moves quickly and is compelling in its narration. I am eager to read the next novel in the sequence.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is not a linear plot, but it is a beautiful story about love, art, devotion, imagination, history, acceptance and a few other topics in the mix. Ali Smith is a genius with words -- how they sound, what they mean, how they morph. She is also a master at blending true events with fiction. At the heart of the plot are Daniel Gluck, an elderly songwriter lyricist and Elisabeth Demand. In the present, he is bed-ridden and presumably dying. In the past, he was Elisabeth's next door neighbor and mentor, and grandfather-figure, opening the world of the arts and imagination to her. Now she is early 30s, an adjunct art professor and sitting by his bedside, reading, occasionally out loud. The past and present flow seamlessly which is what makes this a challenge. Sometimes it's Daniel's current consciousness which is far-ranging and dreamlike in his current state. Sometimes it's Elizabeth's childhood memory, narrated omnisciently, sometimes it's Elisabeth's present interspersed with her historical research on famous female Pop artist Pauline Boty or her relationship over time with her mother Wendy. There is a backdrop of Brexit and other British historical events unknown to me, but also a rising nationalism that is too familiar and has eerie echoes to Daniel's experience of WWII. "Hope is exactly that that's all it is, a matter of how we deal with the negative acts towards human beings by other human beings in the world, remembering that they and we all are human, that nothing human is alien to us, the foul and the fair, and that most important of all we're here for a mere blink of the eyes, that's all." (190) This is the first in a quartet of seasons and the cyclical nature they evoke. Hard to describe, but beautiful to read!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I am conflicted on this book. It took me a long time to go through it, which was a mistake. This should be read in one evening, taking it all in. Ali Smith can write such beautiful, strong prose. She surprises and knits together playful innuendos and some devastatingly powerful passages.

    This is a novel that has no plot. It jumps back and forth in time and roughly follows a friendship of a young woman and a much older man. The setting for the novel, the landscape of Britain, both in the past episodes and its gloomy post-Brexit incarnation, is so alive, like another character in this book. The other main topic intertwined in the story is the forgotten artwork of Pauline Boty.

    Autumn is the first part of the quartet. It captures the zeitgeist and will age well and be read in decades to come. The other books in the series will definitely give new layers to this one as well.

    There were parts of it that touched me, and many more parts of it that didn’t. It lacked coherence, it lacked some direction. It is as such, a mirror of our time. But, it didn’t make for a great reading experience for me.
    Overall: 3.5 stars.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I loved so many of the references here and the thoughts and feelings it evoked. The relationship between Elisabeth and her mother was realistic and relative. However, so much of this book was descriptions of something on a television, too much. I found myself skipping through these lengthy descriptions. Not sure I'd read the other 3 in this unnecessary "quartet".
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really don't know what to say about this book. I just loved it. It was beautifully written and hard to put down.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Autumn by Ali Smith starts with the thoughts of a dying man. I almost gave it up then. I didn't think I could take a whole novel of that kind of stream of consciousness, but it goes on to an actual story about a very ill centenarian, the woman who was friends with him when she was a child, her judgmental mother, the pop artist Pauline Boty, Christine Keeler, and Brexit. It turned out to be a very good book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    My fourth book from the Booker longlist, this is another that, like Reservoir 13, would have made a worthy winner. At the time of its release this book was billed as the first Brexit novel, but there is so much more to it than that.update 19 Oct - Sadly, and yet again, Ali Smith did not win, but I was very impressed by her performance and the way she encouraged Emily Fridlund and Fiona Mozley at the Nottingham shortlist readings event, which I attended last week (the other three shortlisted writers were not there). Reservoir 13 is out, so this is my clear favourite book in the shortlist Smith starts by introducing two characters - Daniel Gluck, who is 101 and clinging to life in a care home, and Elisabeth Demand, who was born in 1984 and knew him as a child when he was her neighbour. In the first part of the book Elisabeth is confronted by various decaying public institutions and the petty jobsworths who enforce the rules - the early scene in which she fights with the post office over a passport application is very funny. These are mixed up with her memories of her conversations with Daniel as a child in which he encouraged her to think differently, and her visits to Daniel in the care home where he spends most of his time asleep.As in many of her other books (notably Like and There but for the), Smith writes very powerfully and sympathetically about intelligent children and how they learn. In this section Daniel introduces Elisabeth to the work of Pauline Boty, the other main subject of the book, by describing some of her lost paintings. Daniel remembers meeting and being obsessed by Boty, and also has an immigrant backstory of his own.Boty was a leading pop artist in 60s London, who died young and was subsequently written out of history by the male critics of the time and her family's refusal to exhibit her work. Her life and work is described in glowing detail, along with one of her inspirations, Christine Keeler. The tone of the book changes from the disillusion and resignation Elisabeth feels when confronted with the British cultural changes that led to the Brexit vote to a form of hope embodied by Boty and her defiant flaunting of the expectations of her suburban middle class family.This is a richly rewarding novel of ideas, and as always Smith flits between her themes lightly. Smith is a national treasure, and this is one of her best books. This is the first of a projected four seasonally themed novels, and I look forward to the rest.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Ali Smith is a very clever author, no doubt about that, but I still can't quite decide if I really like her writing. No, that's not true. I quite like her writing, and I understand why she gets her plaudits, but there's a modern day British grittiness to her writing with a slightly depressive undertone which I'm not sure I overly enjoy in books.This is my second Smith read, and again you're never exactly sure where she's going with the book which is always interesting. There's a purposeful playing with time and other concepts, so that in the end Autumn felt less like a novel to me and more like a fictional vehicle used to carry an essay of social commentary ideas from modern post-Brexit referendum to gender equality past and present, delicately woven with apt observances from the arts (it was the best of times, it was the worst of times).It's fresh off the press in terms of a social commentary of our times, and it's fresh as a daisy as a form.3 stars - I compare my feelings on Smith's writing a little with Tracey Emin's 'My Bed' art installation: part of me sees why everyone is heaping on the praise about its genius, and part of me thinks it's just a slightly interesting unmade bed...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed reading this novel about Autumn, a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. In Ali Smith's novel 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 continue to parade on their own way.The novel proceeds with flashbacks interspersed with the present rather than in a consecutive, chronological narrative. Elisabeth ruminates on her youth and moments earlier in her life that formed her relationship with Daniel. Time becomes a central aspect of the story as highlighted by the following quote:“Time travel is real. We do it all the time. Moment to moment, minute to minute.” (p. 175) Of course this is a metaphorical statement with the travel occurring in our mind's eye.The novel's structure might be compared to a collage and thus similar to the art of Pauline Boty, a founder of the British Pop art movement who is a character in the book. This approach is highlighted by the vagaries of Elisabeth's memory; while there is also a frequent use of contrast as in the moment when immediately following a difficult situation for Elisabeth the narrative shifts to Daniel asleep in his room (p 111). The story opens with a reference to Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, and then there’s a longer reference to a divided country filled with polarities: “All across the country, people felt legitimized. All across the country, people felt bereaved and shocked”? (p. 60) This is a reference to the impact of the Brexit vote and provides a contemporary context for the novel. The novel suggests a certain view of this event when Daniel tells Elisabeth, “So, always try to welcome people into the home of your story.” (p. 119). Perhaps our stories don’t belong to us alone? This can be seen as a call by the author for inclusion and diversity rather than building fences and keeping people out.Smith alludes to and mentions many other authors and literary works, including William Shakespeare, John Keats, James Joyce, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell. Overall this was a meditation on the meaning of richness and harvest and worth. Autumn is the first installment of Ali Smith’s Seasonal quartet, and shines a light 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 beautiful story about aging and time and love—and stories themselves.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Outstanding. This is modern literary fiction at its finest. Urgent, funny, current, literary, with the added bonus of using a large enough font to make reading super-comfortable. And how could I not love a novel where one of the main characters begins every conversation with, "What are you reading?"

    I don't know where Ms. Smith is going with this proposed quartet of novels, but I am already excited about reading the next one, and the next one, and the next one.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I have somewhat mixed feelings about this book. For starters, the prose is amazing although I expected nothing less after reading How To Be Both. This book has anything but a linear plot, and much of it rested upon things I knew nothing about such as the Scandal of '63. I can't help but feel that if I had known about this history or perhaps just knew a bit more about literature and art in general, I would have understood and appreciated the book much more. As it was, I adored the characters - some of whom practically leaped off the page - and the descriptions. The almost surrealist scenes of dealing with bureaucracy were fun, if of course a bit odd, still at a point where I wasn't sure what was going on in this novel. But the end becomes clearer. Keep reading and although you might get a little stuck on what exactly Smith is talking about, you will still get what she means.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Literary literature.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    On the surface, this is the story of Elisabeth and her friendship with her elderly neighbour, Daniel Gluck. But there's a lot more going on here. Ali Smith has taken on the issue of Brexit and some of the anti-immigration feelings that fueled it. She also tells about misogyny in the art world, where a female artist who pioneered the pop art movement was largely ignored by history. Art and story-telling are strong themes in this book. And the basic story is moving and funny and so real. I like Ms. Smith's writing a lot. It has a lot of depth.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Look, I realize this is supposed to be an Arty Book and very deep and intellectual, but I found it boring and pretentious.

    Smith is playing with words here and larding the copy with Joycean puns, wordplay, and allusion as she shifts through time in a pointless tale sort of but not really about the friendship between a young woman and an older man; sort of but not really about Brexit; sort of but not really about op art and The Tempest and Brave New World and A Tale of Two Cities. Basically a waste of time.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Autumn opens with a lovely, lyrical, and memorable episode of magic realism restoring an old man to vitality.The chapter is just the right length.Unfortunately, the plot then devolves into a seriously BORING and unfunny post office passport chapter whichended with the book going into the donation box.As with Knausgaard's 4 Seasonal volumes, I won't be following the trips and wonder about all the praise.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Incredible.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found this novel to be delightful. The author's playfulness with language is wonderful. It is a novel about time, creativity, individuality, gender, and love. Above all, it is about being female. I look forward to her next in this seasonal series.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A treat to read. Smith's delightful wordplay, her grasp of the everyday ridiculousnesses of life in today's crazy world, all of it. So looking forward to Winter, now!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Smith certainly doesn't wear her influences lightly. As in How To Be Both, part of this book reads like an art history lesson, this time focusing on Pauline Boty. Everything else is pretty enjoyable, if rather slight. I did laugh at the 'state of the Brexit nation' passages, which read like a newspaper parody of a Left-wing author. The central friendship is charming, but I'm surprised this book has been quite so feted.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I read this out of order - I read Winter first - and I confess that Winter is my *slight* favourite - but they are both brilliant.
    Autumn is a little more angry, Winter slightly more elegiac.
    They are both brilliant. read them!