User Profile

I was completely enamoured with this book for the first one hundred pages or so. I adored the cold yet philosophical musings of our narrator as she went about her rather squalid life, but at times I struggled to sympathise with A-Hu Li. I feel that Pelevin tries too hard at times to come off as Nabokov, the author that clearly inspired this novel, and ends up just writing in an overly vulgar manner with no redeeming features. Overall, my experience with this book was positive. I just wish that he has focused a little more on the bhuddist themes that he writes about so fluently in the last fifty pages.

This novel takes what could be rightly described as a stream-of-consciousness narrative and gives it substance, even something close to order. Concerned very much with the perception and passage of time, 'Autumn' may be mistakenly described as a novel without much of a plot, but I firmly believe that is exactly what Smith intended with it.