Ali Smith:
(Inverness, 24 August 1962).
Scottish author, playwright, academic and journalist. Sebastian Barry described her in 2016 as ‘Scotland’s Nobel Prize winner in waiting’.
Outside the leaves on the trees constricted slightly; they were the deep done green of the beginning of autumn. It was a Sunday in September.
– “The leaves … constricted slightly”:
suggests that they are beginning to curl, tighten, or draw inward as summer ends.
– “Deep done green”:
is an inventive phrase:
– ‘deep’:
means dark or richly saturated;
– ‘done’:
suggests fully developed, finished, or almost spent.
Thus, the leaves have reached the fullest, final green of summer and are about to change colour.
– “A Sunday in September”:
reinforces the feeling of transition:
Sunday is the end of the week, while September marks the movement from summer into autumn.
Overall, the passage creates a quiet but slightly tense sense of ‘ending, maturity, and imminent change’, fitting the novel’s final section. Smith’s compressed wording may sound reminiscent of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s nature poetry, but it is not known to be a direct quotation from him.
📚 Author and origin:
This passage is by Ali Smith.
It appears in her novel “The Accidental”, first published in 2005, in the final section, “The End.” Page numbers vary by edition.
It is ‘not a traditional saying or proverb’, but Smith’s own poetic description.
It was a Sunday in September. There would only be four.
