Autumn

"Shortlist"

"Yes. That sounds slightly damning with faint praise because, how many Brexit novels have there been? But, that said, I do think Ali Smith is a wonderful writer. This is perhaps more of a novella than a novel—it’s quite short, and I think it’s intended to be the first of four. It’s called Autumn so I think we can guess what the others will be called in due course. It’s wonderfully written and it does capture this atmosphere of a society not in chaos but unsure of itself, not clear where it’s going—and of a young woman who feels disorientated by what our society is doing or doing to itself, and trying to work out where she’s going. Yes, absolutely. As I say, one might guess from the tone that Ali Smith didn’t vote to leave but it’s not an attack on Brexit, or politicised in any particular way. It’s more that it conveys the atmosphere of what the UK and, particularly, England feels like now. It’s not a London book. It’s a book set somewhere in the sort of England that most people actually live in. Statistically that is—I’m speaking as a social scientist here, this is not what the book says—most people do not live in big cities or remote rural villages. They live in greater suburbia/small-to-medium sized towns. It’s not set in somewhere that’s particularly left behind. It’s not set in a decaying, northern ex-mill town or somewhere like that. It’s set in a moderately prosperous part of the country. Statistically (going back to the previous book) you could probably guess that the place that it’s set probably voted to leave by not much—maybe 55-45—so is reasonably reflective of the country as a whole. There is some of that. I think it’s possibly a bit exaggerated in the sense that lots of people who voted didn’t necessarily feel that strongly either way. But there are a lot of people who did. Certainly, on Twitter you see people getting very, very upset. Yes, but that does symbolise something and ties in with what I was saying before about values. If you say, in response to an opinion pollster, that you feel European, the chances that you support the death penalty are close to zero, and the chance you support gay marriage is very, very high. If you say you feel English, it’s not entirely the reverse but the figures are very, very different. It’s quite a strong correlation."

"Since it's spring, Ali Smith's "Autumn," the first few pages of which are already revelatory and liberating."