Autumn: Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017 by Ali SmithMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
This just did not resonate with me. I often find that books shortlisted for the Man Booker just leave me - cold. Autumn has been acclaimed by critics as the ‘first post-Brexit’ novel. Really? There are some vague references to a nation split by the referendum outcome but Autumn is far more than that. It recounts the relationship between Elizabeth, a junior lecturer, and her sometime mentor and neighbour Daniel, who is now a centenarian whose long life is slowly slipping away in an assisted care facility. There are levels of wit and humanity throughout the book that help with much of the tedium elsewhere. There are some laugh out loud moments when Elizabeth visits the Post Office to complete a Check and Send application for a new passport. The conversation between her and the PO clerk is hilarious. Offset by passages that bewildered: ”art like this examines and makes possible a reassessment of the outer appearances of things by transforming them into something other than themselves. An image of an image means the image can be seen with new objectivity, with liberation from the original” Blah, blah…
There is a lot of indifference in this story about daily lives; there is also a quiet heroism as Elisabeth visits Daniel to read to him. There is also much that bored the pants off me….
No more Man Bookers for a while at least.
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