Autumn, by Ali Smith is an easy and engaging read. This is the second of Smith's novels that I have read (the other being How to be Both) and the style of writing is very similar. The prose is beautiful - there are many times when you want to stop and reread passages to savour them properly - and the characters are extremely well drawn. The actual experience of reading the book is enjoyable but afterwards I found it hard to recall what I had enjoyed about it. It tells the story of a young woman and her friendship with an elderly man who is dying in a care home. Through their interaction (and a lot of memories from earlier in their friendship) we also learn about a long forgotten British female artist from the 1960s and receive a searing comment on the state of British society at a very specific moment in recent history- Autumn 2016.
Exit West by Moshin Hamed started well for me but tailed off. It tells the story of Nadia and Saeed who meet and begin a relationship then make a heartbreaking decision to leave their country of birth as the fabric of their society begins to crumble amid civil war. I enjoyed (if enjoyed is the correct term for the emotions evoked by reading about the hardships Nadia and Saeed faced in the country of their birth and the harrowing decision they had to make to leave) the first part of the book, up until Nadia and Saeed arrived in London, but after that point the book stopped being about society now and began to imagine a dystopia in the near future and I found this leap grated with what had gone before. Yes, it highlighted the extreme and polarised ways that society can treat outsiders but I felt sticking to a real and not imagined immigrant experience would have worked better for me and made the book more powerful. It is however a moving portrait of a relationship under stress and both Nadia and Saeed are characters that I liked and cared about. I have only read one other novel by Moshin Hamed (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) and I much preferred Exit West.
Elmet, by Fiona Mozley tells us the story of Daniel who is now heading north, looking for someone, and recounting his earlier life with his dad and his sister Cathy - a simple, largely self-sufficient life in a forest somewhere near Doncaster, and a happy one. The lyrical writing really makes the setting and characters come alive and this highly readable novel is a real page turner (although the characters' accents can seem a little impenetrable at times, you do get used to this ). Events gradually become more sinister as it becomes more apparent just how hard it is to exist on the fringes of society as these characters do and the mystery of who Daniel is looking for (and why) is eventually revealed in a dramatic climax. This was my favourite of the 3 shortlisted books I read - I felt it was a fantastic achievement for a debut author.
Which of the shortlisted books have you read? And which was your favourite?
