October is when the most evocative season of the year begins, autumn inspiring countless great novels and poems.
Autumn Journal
By Louis MacNeice
The poet's account of living in Munich, in the last six months of 1938, this is his record of his existence, by turns humdrum and portentous: "August is nearly over, the people/Back from holiday are tanned/With blistered thumbs and a wallet of snaps and a little/Joie de vivre which is contraband..."
Gone Are the Leaves
By Anne Donovan
Donovan's first foray into historical fiction, tinged with the fantastical, this is a hauntingly visual tale about a 16th-century seamstress and an orphaned boy singer brought to Scotland from France, who find themselves in great danger as they discover more about his background.
Quartet in Autumn
By Barbara Pym
The story of four unassuming people who have retired after working the same London office, this is an elegaic but not entirely melancholy tale of a group reaching their mellower years. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1977, but despite this, Pym remains underrated.
The Hunt for Red October
By Tom Clancy
Nothing whatsoever to do with autumn, it is the tale of a Soviet submarine captain who plans to defect, and a CIA analyst. A great yarn, later filmed with Alec Baldwin as the agent Jack Ryan.
September
By Rosamund Pilcher
A tight-knit family drama, at whose centre is the magnificent Violet Aird, matriarch of the clan. Though indomitable, she can only watch on as small events and grand passions throw her family into turmoil.
The Autumn of the Patriarch
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Described by the author as "a poem on the solitude of power", it is a six-part novel, each of whose segments describes the dangerous authority wielded by a Caribbean tyrant. Marquez wrote it while living in Barcelona, so it is not surprising that Franco was one of the models he drew on.
Ode to Autumn
By John Keats
Written in September 1819, it can be read either as a presentiment of Keat's early death or a reflection on the Peterloo massacre. Its opening line - "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" - is often quoted, but read in its entirety, this almost perfect poem is unbeaten as an evocation of the golden, wistful months that lead up to winter.
November
By Ted Hughes
Far less upbeat or soaring than Keats's ode, this is Hughes at his most dank and dark. "November. The month of the drowned dog," begins his countryman's description of the approach of winter on Yorkshire, when the land lies "sodden as the bed of an ancient lake, treed with iron and birdless". Bleak but brilliant.
The Haunting of Hill House
By Shirley Jackson
Published in 1959, this classy horror novel is ideal for Halloween. It's the story of an occult scholar who, with three others, takes up residence in this gothic pile, hoping to prove if it is haunted or not. No prizes for guessing the answer.
10 The Lay of the Land, by Richard Ford
The third in Ford's brilliant trilogy about Frank Bascombe, sports journalist turned real estate agent, it is set in Thanksgiving week, and sees the 50-something Bascombe facing ill-health, and problems with his second marriage. It can be read as a standalone, but better to begin with The Sportswriter (set at Easter), and its sequel, Independence Day, before reaching this, its pinnacle.
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