Autumn

Ali Smith · b. 1962 · Scotland

Why it matters

Elisabeth's decades-long friendship with her dying, much older neighbor Daniel unspools through memory, forgotten Pop Art, and a Britain freshly split by the Brexit vote. Smith's Seasonal Quartet opener became the first major novel to answer the referendum almost as it happened.

At a glance

Fragmented, associative structure and free-ranging allusion ask for patience despite plain sentences.