Autumn (Seasonal Quartet #1) #

by Ali Smith
4.5 ⭐️

dark; emotional; funny; hopeful; inspiring; reflective; sad; medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

Autumn is an amazing novel. It explores the interactions between a young woman and an old man over the years and especially in the aftermath of the UK's 2016 European referendum, in a country increasingly in pieces. Hope and hopelessness, all mixed up together.

This is part 1 of Smith's 'Seasonal Quartet'. Apparently, there's no need to read them in season order from Autumn — each one stands alone. I've loved this one, and I'm definitely going to be reading the others.

Winter: A Berlin Family, 1899-1945 #

by Len Deighton
3.5 ⭐️

adventurous; challenging; dark; emotional; informative; mysterious; sad; tense; medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

Len Deighton's Winter is a really good read. It follows the lives of an Austrian family from the threshold of the Twentieth Century, through to the end of the 2nd World War, through the development of nationalism in Europe, the rise of fascism, and the domination of Germany by the Nazi Party, eventually taking it into genocide, invasion, and war.

Deighton portrays the incipient, creeping growth of increasingly extreme ideas, one tiny incremental step at a time, and how easily they take over the minds of people just trying to exist, to survive, in an increasingly difficult world. He shows how easy it is to blind our eyes to reality and to the inhumane consequences of our beliefs, dehumanising, marginalising and ignoring those who are most affected.

I highly recommended this book … and it was a particularly interesting one for me as a 'research read' for my current creative writing project.

Only marked down in ⭐️s because of the omniscient narrator, and a few other bugbears of mine with the language of the text.

I understand that Winter is a prelude to several of Deigton's other, more famous spy trilogy novels — Berlin Game, Mexico Set, and London Match. I've got a feeling I'll be reading those soon.