Autumn

Ali Smith's Autumn opens her Seasonal Quartet with a novel about two friends separated by about eight decades. Daniel is over a hundred years old. Elisabeth was born in 1984. Each looks back and ahead, and each tries to make sense of a country that has split into opposing camps after one momentous summer, the aftermath of the 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union.

The book moves freely between past and present rather than following a straight line. Love is found and lost, hope sits beside despair, and the year keeps turning regardless. Underneath runs a question about what we count as abundance, what a harvest is really worth, and what it means to take stock of a life or a nation.

Smith writes with wit and a sense of play, with echoes of Shakespeare, a streak of Keats-like wistfulness, and the bright, restless energy of 1960s pop art. Autumn asks who we are and what we are made of, and it is also a book about how stories hold us together. It was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize.