Review of the Day: Autumn by Ali Smith

Some books are plot driven and some are character driven; Ali Smith’s book is idea driven. As far as plot, the book is about the relationship between Elisabeth Demand (30) and Daniel Gluck (at least 100) at the start of Brexit. The story moves back and forth through time starting with when they first met when Elisabeth was 30 and Daniel was well into his 70s.

In his review in the NYTimes, Dwight Garner says, “If this book gets the readership it deserves, perhaps this will be someone’s tattoo:

foreskins come and foreskins go! But Mozart lasts forever! (p.188).

Quite a bit of the book discusses art, the nature of art, and female artists. Elisabeth starts writing her master’s dissertation of Pauline Boty — a now largely forgotten pop artist of the 1960s who suddenly died at age 28 in 1966.

In addition to discussions on art, Smith has some digressions on modern bureaucracy like passports and the process of applying for them:

I don’t want a new passport if it’s going to look like this, her mother says. And all these men, all through it. Where are all the women? Oh, here’s one. Is that Gracie Fields? Architecture? But who on earth? and is that it? Is this woman wearing the funny hat the only woman in the whole thing? Oh no. Here’s another one, but sort of folded-in at the centre of a page, like an afterthought. And here’s another couple, on the same page as the Scottish pipers, both ethnic stereotype dancers. Performing arts. Well, that’s Scotland and women and a brace of continents all well and truly in their place. 

She hands it back to Elisabeth. 

If I’d seen this ridiculous thing that passes for a passport before the referendum, she says, I’d have known to be ready well ahead of time for what was so clearly on its way (p. 195-6).

I definitely want to read more from Ali Smith.

Kindle and LibroFM audiobook. 202 pgs. 15 February 2026.