Key themes
- Time and its distortions — what the past does to the present
- Brexit and the fracturing of a country
- The friendship between a young woman and a very old man — and what each gives the other
About this book
Elisabeth Demand visits her elderly friend Daniel Gluck in a care home as he drifts in and out of sleep and consciousness. Interwoven with their relationship across decades is a fragmented portrait of Britain in the weeks after the 2016 Brexit vote. The first of Smith's Seasonal Quartet and one of the first literary novels to respond directly to Brexit.
Published in October 2016, Autumn was written in the two months immediately following the Brexit referendum. It is one of the first literary novels to respond directly to that political event, and has been used in university courses on contemporary fiction and politics.
Discussion questions
- The novel was written and published in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote. How does Smith incorporate this political moment without making the novel a political tract?
- Daniel and Elisabeth's friendship spans decades and ages. What is Smith saying about the relationships that transcend convention — and about what it means to know someone across many years?
- The novel is structured as a series of dreamlike passages alongside realistic ones. How does Smith's use of disrupted time and form relate to her subject — a country where time seems to have fractured?
- The Pauline Boty sections — about the undervalued Pop Art painter — are woven through the novel. What is Smith saying about women artists who are lost to history?
- Autumn is the first of Smith's Seasonal Quartet. What in it establishes themes and concerns that carry through the series — and does it work as a standalone?
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