Available at several other CUNY libraries ( link).Wide-ranging in time-scale and light-footed through histories, Autumn is an unforgettable story about aging and time and love-and stories themselves. A luminous meditation on the meaning of richness and harvest and worth, Autumn is the first installment of Ali Smith’s Seasonal quartet, and it casts an eye over our own time: Who are we? What are we made of? Shakespearean jeu d’esprit, Keatsian melancholy, the sheer bright energy of 1960s pop art.

Two old friends-Daniel, a centenarian, and Elisabeth, born in 1984-look to both the future and the past as the United Kingdom stands divided by a historic, once-in-a-generation summer.

Also available at several other CUNY libraries ( link)Īutumn.Available at John Jay, Stacks PS3558.A421.Exit West follows the couple as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors - doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet - sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed.

Best books to read 2017 nytimes