Autumn

Review by New York Times Review

THE PERFECT NANNY, by Leila Slimani. Translated by Sam Taylor. (Penguin, paper, $16.) Two children die at the hands of their nanny in this devastating novel, an unnerving cautionary tale that won France's prestigious Prix Goncourt and analyzes the intimate relationship between mothers and caregivers. KING ZENO, by Nathaniel Rich. (MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.) In Rich's riotous novel about New Orleans a hundred years ago, at the dawn of the Jazz Age, a great American city and a new genre of music take shape as the Spanish flu and a serial ax murderer both run rampant. THE YEARS, by Annie Ernaux. Translated by Alison L. Strayer. (Seven Stories, paper, $19.95.) In this autobiography, the French writer anchors her particular 20th-century memories within the daunting flux of 21st-century consumerism and media domination, turning her experiences into a kind of chorus reflecting on politics and lifestyle changes. DOGS AT THE PERIMETER, by Madeleine Thien. (Norton, paper, $15.95.) Narrated by a neurological researcher whose memories of her childhood in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge start to leak into her present day, this novel is contrapuntal and elegiac in tone, with a white heat beneath. THE LAST GIRL: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State, by Nadia Murad with Jenna Krajeski. (Tim Duggan Books, $27.) Murad, a Yazidi woman, describes the torture and rapes she suffered at the hands of ISIS militants in Iraq before escaping to become a spokeswoman for endangered Yazidis. WINTER, by Ali Smith. (Pantheon, $25.95.) The second in Smith's cycle of seasonal novels depicts a contentious Christmas reunion between two long-estranged sisters. As in "Autumn" (one of the Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2017), a female artist figures prominently, and Smith again takes the nature of consciousness itself as a theme. GREEN, by Sam Graham-Felsen. (Random House, $27.) Set in a majority-minority middle school in 1990s Boston, this debut coming-of-age novel (by the chief blogger for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign) tells the story of a white boy and a black boy who become friends - to a point. A STATE OF FREEDOM, by Neel Mukherjee. (Norton, $25.95.) Mukherjee's novel, a homage of sorts to V. S. Naipaul, presents five interconnected stories set in India and exploring the lives of the unmoored. BARKUS, by Patricia MacLachlan. (Chronicle, $14.99; ages 4 to 7.) A mysteriously smart dog changes everything for a little girl in this witty beginning to a new early chapter book series from MacLachlan, the author of books for children of all ages. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [February 11, 2018]

---

Review by Booklist Review

England is at a turning point. Brexit has just passed and xenophobia and electric fences are dividing the nation. At 32, Elisabeth is still trying to decide what her future holds, and the widespread national uncertainty has left her feeling unsettled. As the nation erupts around her, she looks to her past for comfort, visiting her mother and Mr. Gluck, the neighbor who helped raise her. Daniel Gluck, now more than a century old, was once a constant friend to Elisabeth, but now he lies in a deep sleep that might be his last. Visiting weekly to read to him, Elisabeth realizes how little she knows about the man who was once her devoted companion. Man Booker Prize finalist Smith (Public Library and Other Stories, 2016) slowly builds a sparse picture of Daniel's past and his influence over Elisabeth's future. With a strong nod to British pop culture, its eponymous art movement, and mid-century feminism, the reluctantly revelatory nature of this story creates a well-rounded allegory symbolic on many levels. The start of Smith's Seasonal quartet, this is delightfully cerebral and relevant.--Ophoff, Cortney Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This splendid free-form novel-the first in a seasonally themed tetralogy-chronicles the last days of a lifelong friendship between Elisabeth, a British university lecturer in London, and her former neighbor, a centenarian named Daniel. Opening with an oblique, dreamy prologue about mortality, the novel proper sets itself against this past summer's historic Brexit vote, intermittently flashing back to the early years of Elisabeth and Daniel's relationship. Though there are a few relevant subplots, including Elisabeth's nightmarish attempt to procure a new passport, as well as her fascination with the painter Pauline Boty, the general plot is appropriately shapeless, reflecting the character's discombobulated psyche. Smith (How to Be Both) deftly juxtaposes her protagonists' physical and emotional states in the past and present, tracking Elisabeth's path from precocity to disillusionment. Eschewing traditional structure and punctuation, the novel charts a wild course through uncertain terrain, an approach that excites and surprises in equal turn. Seen through Elisabeth's eyes, Daniel's deterioration is particularly affecting. Smith, always one to take risks, sees all of them pay off yet again. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

---

Review by Library Journal Review

On the eve of the polarizing Brexit vote, a young woman reads aloud at the bedside of a semicomatose elderly man whom she visits weekly in his nursing home. When they met years earlier, Elisabeth was a neglected young girl whose single mother frequently left her at home alone, and Daniel was the much older, sophisticated European who had recently moved in next door. Elisabeth may have reminded Daniel of his beloved younger sister, who was left behind when Daniel escaped from World War II Germany. Over long walks and talks, Daniel patiently introduced Elisabeth to fine literature and to the avant-garde art of the Sixties. Many years later, Elisabeth, now an art historian, rediscovers Daniel close to death in a nursing home. As a wave of xenophobia sweeps across Europe and over to Britain, the parallels to the racism and violence in Daniel's past are striking. Verdict At the heart of Man Booker Prize nominee Smith's (How To Be Both) new novel is the charming friendship between a lonely girl and a kind older man who offers her a world of culture. This novel of big ideas and small pleasures is enthusiastically recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 8/15/16.]-Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---

Review by Kirkus Book Review

A girl's friendship with an older neighbor stands at the center of this multifaceted meditation on aging, art, love, and affection.Smith (Public Library and Other Stories, 2016, etc.) opens this volume, the first of a planned quartet featuring each season, with a man washed ashore naked. He wonders if he is dead. He sees a girl nearby and sews himself some clothing from leaves after a needle and a bobbin of gold thread appear in his hand. From dream or fantasy, the narrative shifts to hard reality: the man, Daniel, next appears asleep in a hospital bed in the present time, age 101. His visitor is Elisabeth, age 32, a university lecturer in art history who has just endured the painful comedy of bureaucracy while trying to renew her passport at the post office. She met Daniel when she was 8 and needed to interview him for a school project. The book will jump around in time as Daniel introduces Elisabeth to puns, storytelling, and art, especially that of a woman he loved named Pauline Boty. She was an actual U.K. artist of the pop era who made a brief appearance in the movie Alfie. Her work included a portrait of Christine Keeler during the Profumo Affair, and Smith has fun with Keeler's court appearances. History is also current, as Smith touches on the friction caused by Brexit nationwide (with a pointed opening allusion to Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities) and in one town where some undefined menace arises with the installation of large electrified fences. Smith has a gift for drawing a reader into whatever world she creates, even when she bends the rules of fiction, as she did also in her previous novel, How to Be Both (2014). Smith's book is a kaleidoscope whose suggestive fragments and insights don't easily render a pleasing pattern, yet it's compelling in its emotional and historical freight, its humor, and keen sense of creativity and loss. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

---

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times. Again. That's the thing about things. They fall apart, always have, always will, it's in their nature. So an old old man washes up on a shore. He looks like a punctured football with its stitching split, the leather kind that people kicked a hundred years ago. The sea's been rough. It has taken the shirt off his back; naked as the day I was born are the words in the head he moves on its neck, but it hurts to. So try not to move the head. What's this in his mouth, grit? it's sand, it's under his tongue, he can feel it, he can hear it grinding when his teeth move against each other, singing its sand-song: I'm ground so small, but in the end I'm all, I'm softer if I'm underneath you when you fall, in sun I glitter, wind heaps me over litter, put a message in a bottle, throw the bottle in the sea, the bottle's made of me, I'm the hardest grain to harvest   to harvest   the words for the song trickle away. He is tired. The sand in his mouth and his eyes is the last of the grains in the neck of the sandglass.   Daniel Gluck, your luck's run out at last.   He prises open one stuck eye. But -   Daniel sits up on the sand and the stones   - is this it? really? this? is death?   He shades his eyes. Very bright.   Sunlit. Terribly cold, though.   He is on a sandy stony strand, the wind distinctly harsh, the sun out, yes, but no heat off it. Naked, too. No wonder he's cold. He looks down and sees that his body's still the old body, the ruined knees.   He'd imagined death would distil a person, strip the rotting rot away till everything was light as a cloud.   Seems the self you get left with on the shore, in the end, is the self that you were when you went.   If I'd known, Daniel thinks, I'd have made sure to go at twenty, twenty five.   Only the good.   Or perhaps (he thinks, one hand shielding his face so if anyone can see him no one will be offended by him picking out what's in the lining of his nose, or giving it a look to see what it is - it's sand, beautiful the detail, the different array of colours of even the pulverized world, then he rubs it away off his fingertips) this is my self distilled. If so then death's a sorry disappointment.   Thank you for having me, death. Please excuse me, must get back to it, life.   He stands up. It doesn't hurt, not so much, to.   Now then.   Home. Which way?   He turns a half circle. Sea, shoreline, sand, stones. Tall grass, dunes. Flatland behind the dunes. Trees past the flatland, a line of woods, all the way back round to the sea again.   The sea is strange and calm.   Then it strikes him how unusually good his eyes are today.   I mean, I can see not just those woods, I can see not just that tree, I can see not just that leaf on that tree. I can see the stem connecting that leaf to that tree.   He can focus on the loaded seedhead at the end of any piece of grass on those dunes over there pretty much as if he were using a camera zoom. And did he just look down at his own hand and see not just his hand, in focus, and not just a scuff of sand on the side of his hand, but several separate grains of sand so clearly delineated that he can see their edges, and (hand goes to his forehead) no glasses ?   Well.   He rubs sand off his legs and arms and chest then off his hands. He watches the flight of the grains of it as it dusts away from him in the air. He reaches down, fills his hand with sand. Look at that. So many.   Chorus:   How many worlds can you hold in a hand.   In a handful of sand.   (Repeat.)   He opens his fingers. The sand drifts down.   Now that he's up on his feet he is hungry. Can you be hungry and dead? Course you can, all those hungry ghosts eating people's hearts and minds. He turns the full circle back to the sea. He hasn't been on a boat for more than fifty years, and that wasn't really a boat, it was a terrible novelty bar, party place on the river. He sits down on the sand and stones again but the bones are hurting in his, he doesn't want to use impolite language, there's a girl there further up the shore, are hurting like, he doesn't want to use impolite -   A girl?   Yes, with a ring of girls round her, all doing a wavy ancient Greek looking dance. The girls are quite close. They're coming closer.   This won't do. The nakedness.   Then he looks down again with his new eyes at where his old body was a moment ago and he knows he is dead, he must be dead, he is surely dead, because his body looks different from the last time he looked down at it, it looks better, it looks rather good as bodies go. It looks very familiar, very like his own body but back when it was young.   A girl is nearby. Girls. Sweet deep panic and shame flood through him.   He makes a dash for the long grass dunes (he can run, really run!), he puts his head round the side of a grass tuft to check nobody can see him, nobody coming, and up and off (again! not even breathless) across the flatland towards those woods.   There will be cover in the woods.   There will maybe be something too with which to cover himself up. But pure joy! He'd forgotten what it feels like, to feel. To feel even just the thought of one's own bared self near someone else's beauty. Excerpted from Autumn by Ali Smith All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

---