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This book looks at England in the years leading into Brexit. ( )

Beautiful ( )

Initially, I really thought I was going to love this book. Elisabeth is a fantastic character, and if the whole book had just focused on her and her witty insights, her relationship to Daniel, her strong personality, it would have been a five star read for me.

Unfortunately, it didn't.

And even more unfortunately, there was only one other aspect (of MANY) that I enjoyed, and that aspect still involved Elisabeth and her relationship with a caring neighbor, Daniel.

Everything else in this novel really didn't work for me:

- There's a whole lot of "autumn as a metaphor" with repeated references to leaves and tree trunks and falling leaves. Strained.

- A big part of the book revolves around Elisabeth's thesis. She focuses on a woman, Pauline Boty, the only female pop artist whose talents have really been hidden and sublimated to her male contemporaries. Daniel introduces Elisabeth to Pauline's work by describing her paintings (Zzzzz). Yeah, there's a lot of descriptions of paintings which could not bore me more. I like art. I just don't like descriptions of art apparently.

- Daniel is very old and is in a nursing home of some sort. He has these surrealistic dreams. Honestly, these fall into the same category as magical realism for me. Maybe a little worse. I'm sure there's some important symbolism in there somewhere . . .but I struggled to stay focused enough to ascertain it.

- Finally, there's some political statements woven in about Brexit - - which is fine, but I thought the context wasn't strong enough to really make me care.


Bottom line, I cared about Daniel and Elisabeth's relationship, but Elisabeth is the only character that really felt fully realized to me. The book tried to be something much, much bigger, and for me it didn't hit the mark, but I can see how others might like the use of language which was distinctive. There's also some instances of tremendous wit, and I did enjoy that . . .just needed more of it to overcome the rest. The whole thing just didn't have a cohesive feel to me, but the originality, the tremendous female protagonist, the interesting use of language, and the wit lead me to give it a third star. If I was going on my personal enjoyment alone, it would definitely be two stars. ( )

It’s about memories, art, love of the aching, tender, unrequited kind, all against the backdrop of the cruelty of post-Brexit (or post-Trump) uncivil society. Replete with the lovely, lyrical wordplay that I adore Ali Smith for. ( )