The A&C Team’s Autumn Favourites

Mairi Alice Dun, A&C Editor

Edvard Munch, Vampire or Love and Pain From the mind of the great Age of Anxiety artist of The Scream, comes this eerie and kind of sexy vampiric image of love. If you ignore the artist’s misogynistic history, this is quite an inspiring Halloween costume look. Munch did not actually intend for this to be a vampire painting, but simply to depict the anguish of love, maintaining that this fiery redhead is just kissing her lover’s neck. Likely story. I find this work, along with a lot of Munch’s oeuvre, to be a particular favourite during spooky season and beyond for its autumnal colour palette and bordering-on-abstract composition.

Helen Lipsky, Deputy A&C Editor

Robert Gailbraith, The Cuckoo’s Calling Autumn calls for a cozy read. Each year the same activities roll around, and people look to movies, TV shows, and books to fuel their annual fill of spookiness, coziness, fantasy, etc. Harry Potter ranks at the top of most people’s list of movie and book recommendations to best appreciate the autumn while simultaneously preparing for the cold and closeness of the winter. We cannot recommend the Harry Potter series every year, but we can look at something similar. JK Rowling, under the pseudonym Robert Gailbraith, writes The Cuckoo’s Calling, the first book of the Cormoran Strike series. The book follows detective Cormoran Strike, as he investigates the controversial death of supermodel Lula Landry. The novel, although not as much of an obvious page turner, intrigues readers and proves a good choice to match the energy of autumn eeriness.

I read this book last year; it offered me a mental escape into a mystery world, allowing me to participate with the characters and enjoy the intensity of a crime novel and the surprising coziness of mystery.

Miguel de la Cal Moreno, Deputy A&C Editor

Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go This autumn I finally got around to reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It was outstanding. Ishiguro plays you like a fiddle, avidly dropping hints that make you subtly raise an eyebrow before a great discovery, or simply revealing something out of the blue to cause an audible gasp. You feel smart enough to pretend that you are cracking the mysteries, but the surprises come in a regular, well-timed fashion to keep you engaged and invested. By the end, you have come to understand the characters rich emotional tapestry to feel their pain and loss and boy oh boy is there pain to feel. The final chapters are a tour-de-force through the hellish landscapes of sorrow that will make you feel almost all meanings of the word “sad”. And you sit there, thinking, crying, and ready to do it all over again.

Adelaide Crosby, Deputy A&C Editor Nick Drake, Pink Moon Whenever the leaves start to turn, I find myself revisiting the music of Nick Drake. His 1972 album Pink Moon, in particular, is among that special class of record that I long to listen to from beginning to end, ceaselessly. It has a certain quality of softness, a delicate melancholy, which inspires both peace and a profound nostalgia. I recommend it for early autumn mornings and late afternoon walks, just before the sun makes its premature descent.