The 5 Best Autumn Reads To Curl Up With – & Why It’s An Author’s Favourite Season
If I had to guess the number of times that I’ve gifted someone a copy of Donna Tartt’s debut novel, The Secret History, I’d estimate 10. If I had to guess the number of times that I’d read it, I’d wager the total could be counted on four hands by now. My favourite book tells the story of an isolated group of classics students at a prestigious East Coast university in the US, who we discover from the very first pages are involved in the murder of a classmate. Aside from the thrilling whydunnit plot device, it is Tartt’s poetic prose that keeps me coming back – in particular, her descriptions of autumn in New England.
I’m not alone. This passage, describing what drew the Californian narrator Richard to an East Coast school, perfectly encapsulates the magic of the season: ‘Even now I remember those pictures, like pictures in a storybook one loved as a child. Radiant meadows, mountains vaporous in the trembling distance; leaves ankle-deep on a gusty autumn road; bonfires and fog in the valleys; cellos, dark window-panes, snow.’
More than any other season, autumn lends itself to evocative, sensory descriptions. The vibrant hues of russet, copper and crimson leaves. The crunch of them underfoot. The earthy scent of rain-soaked soil; the smokiness of a bonfire. It’s easy to see why it’s provided ample fodder for writers over the centuries, from poet John Donne in the 1700s to F Scott Fitzgerald and Tartt in the 20th century.
There is this idea of autumn as creative and intellectual, somehow – not least because of all those turtlenecks. It’s romantic, too, with its implications of cosiness – there’s a reason why the Central Park scene where Harry and Sally stroll through the leaves in the Nora Ephron classic sticks out in so many people’s memories. Ephron herself has waxed lyrical about the season, once writing: “Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”
08.08.2024
For many of us, autumn will always evoke childhood memories of the new school year (see: every Harry Potter novel). If the year pivots on two key moments of change, spring and autumn, it is autumn that brings with it a total sense of renewal, when the leaves fall from the trees and the cycle begins anew. Some writers have been attracted to the darkness inherent in this (unsurprising when you consider Halloween is its chief holiday). Case in point, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Autumn: A Dirge (1894), with the lines: ‘And the Year/On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, / Is lying.’ Yet for me, autumn will always be a season of promise and beauty, as it was for Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby: “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”
5 Of The Best Autumnal Books To Curl Up With Now
- The Secret History by Donna Tartt – From its very first pages, The Secret History immerses you in the beauty of the season with its evocative descriptions of leaf fall and a new term at college.
- Persuasion by Jane Austen – Jane Austen is a master of pathetic fallacy, using autumn as a metaphor for decline and the promise of second chances in her love story between Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth.
- Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier – Tapping into the gloominess of the season, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca is an atmospheric thriller, utilising the stormy weather of Cornwall in the autumn and winter months to mirror the confusion and panic within our narrator’s mind, the Second Mrs De Winter.
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë – “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.” So begins Charlotte Brönte’s magnum opus Jane Eyre on a particularly bleak November day, the perfect autumnal read with its themes of renewal coming out of gloom.
- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern – The Night Circus is set in the autumn, with beautiful descriptions of the smells of bonfires, the crispness of toffee apples, and the darkness of the season. Its plot centres on a travelling magical circus, Le Cirque des Rêves, which traverses countries and times with a memorable cast of characters – the autumn being an important additional character.
Rebecca is a lifestyle, culture and fashion journalist who cut her teeth working on the digital desks at Harper’s Bazaar, Grazia and Tatler. After a decade in the big smoke, she now lives in her hometown of Birmingham with her daughter Luna
