Kathy Hamilton Autumn reading is a special treat, reserved for books that feel like crisp morning air combined with swirling nostalgia. This is the season for hot, steaming mugs of coffee, warm woollen blankets and a book to keep you company as the days get short and the night draws in around you.
If, like me, the first leaf falling has you reaching for Keats or craving a long tête-à-tête with a classic then, welcome friend. Personally, I think there’s no better season for reading that Autumn. I crave the comforting embrace of a good book when the weather starts to change around me.
Why Autumn Reading is the Best
The feelings that autumn evokes are often ambiguous. The season is the beginning of the end of a year but also, for many of us, feels like a fresh start. This ambiguity is a fertile breeding ground for excellent literature.
That’s why I thought it would be fun to create an Autumn Reading anthology of sorts. A collection of books to reach for when you find yourself feeling that familiar heady mix of sentimental yearning, renewed optimism, and melancholy.
Autumn by Ali Smith
Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. That’s what it felt like for Keats in 1819. How about Autumn 2016? Daniel is a century old. Elisabeth, born in 1984, has her eye on the future. The United Kingdom is in pieces, divided by a historic once-in-a-generation summer. Love is won, love is lost. Hope is hand in hand with hopelessness. The seasons roll round, as ever.
What better than starting an Autumn Reading list than with a book called Autumn? Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet has received lots of praise as a poignant and subtle exploration of the way we experience time. Set just after the EU referendum, the first post-Brexit novel is also the first in this brilliant, evocative series.
The Fortnight in September by R. C. Sherriff
“The Fortnight in September embodies the kind of mundane normality the men in the dug-out longed for – domestic life at 22 Corunna Road in Dulwich, the train journey to Bognor via Clapham Junction to the south coast, the two weeks living in lodgings and going to the beach every day. The family’s only regret is leaving their garden.”
The funny thing about books that are ‘about nothing’ is that they usually capture that effervescent ‘everything’ of life. This is the overriding feeling in The Fortnight in September. R. C. Sherriff deftly captures a family in flux, on the brink of change, who are enjoying a last, perfect, holiday together. This book is perfect for Autumn reading because, to me, the season is the last hurrah before the wind-down of the year.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
A troubled childhood strengthens Jane’s natural independence and spirit – which prove necessary when she finds employment with Mr Rochester. As Jane gradually uncovers Thornfield Hall’s terrible secret, forcing her to make a choice. Should she stay with Rochester or follow her convictions – even if it means leaving the man she loves?
Autumn is Bronte Season! Really, I think you could easily substitute any book by the Brontes in place of Jane Eyre, and I did almost suggested the Gothic Masterpiece- Wuthering Heights. But to me, there is something perennially autumnal about Jane Eyre. It a novel of power and intrigue but also the story of a woman’s quest for equality and freedom.
Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
Oskar is a 12-year-old boy living with his mother on a dreary housing estate at the city’s edge. Eli is the young girl who moves in next door. She doesn’t go to school and never leaves the flat by day. She is a 200-year-old vampire, forever frozen in childhood, and condemned to live on a diet of fresh blood. Despite the odds, the will become friends.
Autumn reading is made for Horror, don’t you think? So, if you like your spine chilling horror tinged with a nice dose of social commentary then Let The Right One In is perfect for you. A huge bestseller in its native Sweden, this book fuses a terrifying supernatural story with a moving account of friendship.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
“Charting the changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, whose search for intellectual fulfilment leads to disastrous marriage. the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past.”
Despite its name evoking spring, Middlemarch feels autumnal to me. Both its size and its content make it a perfect book to cosy up with as the nights draw in. George Eliot breathes life into her characters making it easy to invest in their hopes and dreams. Reading this book takes time, but it’s well worth it.
The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie
There’s a serial killer on the loose, bent on working his way through the alphabet. And as a macabre calling card, he leaves beside each victim’s corpse the ABC Railway Guide open at the name of the town where the murder has taken place. There seems little chance of the murderer being caught – until he makes the crucial and vain mistake of challenging Hercule Poirot to frustrate his plans…
I don’t know about you but some of the best books for autumn reading are classic crime novels; to me, that means it’s Agatha Christie time. Really you could substitute any of her books into this spot, but I enjoy Christie when she gets nice and psychological. So, The ABC Murders is particularly good. Plus, this has been recently adapted into a T.V Drama, so you can watch that too.
Persuasion by Jane Austen
In her youth, Anne Elliot broke off an engagement to penniless Captain Wentworth at the insistence of her friend Lady Russell. Acquiescing to the demands of her class at the expense of her happiness. But when Wentworth returns from the Napoleonic wars rich and famous, Anne finds her affection rekindled – even though Wentworth seems more interested in young, vivacious Louisa Musgrove.
Jane Austen’s final completed novel is my personal favourite. Persuasion is perfect for autumn reading because it explores second chances, lost love and regrets. A love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities, Persuasion is the perfect book to curl up with on a rainy day.
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
Charles Ryder, a lonely student at Oxford, is captivated by the outrageous and exquisitely beautiful Sebastian Flyte. Invited to Brideshead, Sebastian’s magnificent family home, Charles welcomes the attentions of its eccentric, aristocratic inhabitants. But he also discovers a world where duty and desire, faith and earthly happiness are in conflict.
For many of us, autumn recalls the return to school or campus. Which is why Brideshead Revisted feels like perfect for autumn reading. A paean to the fading glamour of pre-WWII aristocracy, and drenched in nostalgic reverie yet alive to the era’s shortcomings, Brideshead Revisited is a modern classic.
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
The Waves follows a set of six friends from childhood to middle age as they experience the world around them and explore who they are and what it means to be alive. As the contours of their lives are revealed, a unique novel is slowly unveiled. Enfolded within Woolf’s lyrical and mysterious language, the mundane takes on a startling new significance.
Regarded by many as Virginia Woolf’s best novel, The Waves is an enigmatic, undulating novel. Astonishingly beautiful and poetic, this novel conveys the endless complexities of human experience. I always find myself drawn to Virginia Woolf in Autumn, there is something about her that makes you want to hunker down and get lost in her words.
Melmoth by Sarah Perry
Twenty years ago Helen Franklin did something she cannot forgive herself for, and she has spent every day since barricading herself against its memory. But the sheltered life she has crafted for herself is about to change. A strange manuscript has come into her possession, and its contents have the power to unravel every strand of her fragile safety net.
Wrapping up this list of best books for autumn reading is some modern gothic literature. Melmoth takes its title from Charles Maturin’s 1820 Gothic novel, Melmoth the Wanderer. And true to its inspiration, it tackles essential notions of faith and redemption. Rich with dark dread it’s a chilling portrait of life caught in the chasm between dark and light.
