MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Financial Times, Southern Living, The Guardian, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year Long-listed for the Gordon Burn Prize Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ...

Overall, this was a winner with NUBClub. There were some naysayers on this book, who mostly noted that not much happened and the plot was thin, and no one argued with that. It is a small plot. But the majority who loved the book saw that as a strength -- Nick noted that the book was basically a vignette of the strange, deep friendship between a young woman and a much older, dying man. We marveled at how strongly the relationship was relayed in the simple observations Elisabeth makes in her reflections of her childhood and her art-critic view of the world in which she lives, and the writing of the bond between Elisabeth and Daniel and how they met was so strong in places it moved several of us to tears. At the same time, we marveled at how well Smith integrated observations about political conflict and local protest, here about land use in a small town but with clear echoes of Brexit concerns. There were certainly some confusing sections, most notably Daniel's illness-induced dreams, but even those sections were beautifully evocative. All and all, Smith's novel paints a stunning singular picture of a relationship and, in its very narrow and focused subject matter, made a gorgeous poem about what true friendship can be and how we come to understand our place in the world.