Autumn begins with a trippy out of body experience- there’s definitely a beach, possibly a dead body, definitely a copse and trees, sand and leaves and nature. It’s ethereal and floaty, dreamlike and disorientating. Having read Lincoln in the Bardo, this summer I was expecting it to be some kind of purgatory, because it seemed oddly familiar. We eventually learn that this is Daniel Gluck, one of two characters that will recur at different times, at different ages throughout the novel. The next time we see him, slightly more corporeally, he is 101 and clinging to life in a soulless care home.
Next we meet Elisabeth
Demand, a thoroughly modern just-about millennial, over educated and under
employed. Scraping an existence as a casual contract lecturer in Art History,
she seems harassed, unfulfilled and adrift in a world that she no longer
recognises. The first time we meet her is to observe a farcical, almost Fawlty
Towers-esque ordeal with the bureaucratic minions at the Post Office involving
head sizes, deli tickets and the humourless jobsworths that work there- the
erosion and decay of Public institutions and social bankruptcy are recurrent
themes throughout. The Post Office, on this visit, is full of homeless people
as the library has closed. The book declares itself to be the first post-Brexit
novel, and it captures the melancholy betrayal of a divided and abandoned
nation, one that is confused, angry and adrift. I loved the book just for how
disappointed it is in people. It’s not really a hopeful story, there’s no
suggestion of a conclusion and that fits how us official 48% feel about pretty
much everything.
As a child, Elasabeth lived
next door to a late 70s aged Daniel- their friendship was an odd one,
encouraged by Elisabeth’s mother when she needed a babysitter, recast as
suspicious if she thought about it too hard. The sprightly for his age Daniel
taught his young neighbour to think, to imagine, to wonder. To see things that
weren’t there and change things that were. He seems to be one of the first
people to really recognise Elisabeth’s intelligence, and he treats her like an
equal. We also get a glimpse of his immigrant backstory and his lost sister, a
woman that Resisted and was promptly never heard of again.
Elisabeth’s mother, the only
other character we really see much of is an odd woman, to begin with almost Mrs
Wormwood-ish in her brashness and presumed negligence. When her daughter is
young, she seems reckless, irresponsible. She lies to her kid about where she’s
going and Elisabeth is smart enough to see through it with adult-level cynicism
and exasperation. Mum encourages her daughter lie about her homework and leaves
her in the practically stranger danger hands of a next door neighbour. Later on
she is suspicious of their friendship, wilfully and frustratingly misunderstanding
their shared love of art as something sinister and inappropriate. After moving
to the village in later life, she becomes this liberal antiques enthusiast,
lamenting the hate crime wave and railing against the lies and the wilful
ignorance. 25 years makes her unrecognisable. I don’t know what that means, but
Ali Smith never makes it seem like a mistake. It’s just mysterious people being
mysterious.
Autumn is a non-linear novel
that flits around between Elisabeth’s lifetime- the art dissertation she wrote
on a forgotten British pop artist, her canalside walks as a child with Daniel,
sat at his bedside in the present day reading Brave New World. The prose is beautiful and powerful, a slideshow
of images and emotions. It manages to be both playful and furious at the same
time, which I was incredibly impressed with. I love books that have art as a
central theme, how art makes a person feel. It’s fascinating to have such
visceral and personal responses captured in prose, which is one of the elements
that I found the most joyous about How To
Be Both.
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