Gliff

Ali Smith

Gliff
Format
Hardback
Publisher
Penguin Books Ltd
Country
United Kingdom
Published
19 November 2024
Pages
288
ISBN
9780241665572

Gliff

Ali Smith

The first of two new interconnected novels from bestselling, Booker Prize-shortlisted author Ali Smith.

O brave new world, that has such people in't.

Once upon a time not very far from now, two children come home to find a line of wet red paint encircling the outside of their house.

What does it mean?

It's a truism of our time that it'll be the next generation who'll sort out our increasingly toxic world.

What would that actually be like?

In a state turned hostile, a world of insiders and outsiders, what things of the past can sustain them and what shape can resistance take?

And what's a horse got to do with any of this?

Gliff is a novel about how we make meaning and how we are made meaningless. With a nod to the traditions of dystopian fiction, a glance at the Kafkaesque, and a new take on the notion of classic, it's a moving and electrifying read, a vital and prescient tale of the versatility and variety deep-rooted in language, in nature and in human nature.

Review

Ali Smith writes the fiction that we need. I last read her work in 2011, and though I regret not returning to her for so long, it has been quite amazing to experience the transformation between these novels. While her love for language and her reverence for knowledge and humanity have always shone through, her ability to stay so finely attuned to the wider world is, for me, her most remarkable talent.

There will be a great temptation to label this as a work of dystopian fiction. In my view, tagging Gliff as such diminishes the scope and intent of this brilliant work. We live in a rapidly changing world, and personal peace is so often reliant on accepting whatever circumstances surround us. In the days after finishing this book, I found myself looking at the world in sharper focus – not that I necessarily saw it anew, but that in reading Gliff, I was reminded of those feelings and convictions which I had begun to let go of. Though it may be set in the near future, there is nothing in this narrative that isn’t already happening somewhere in some similar way. Gliff is not really a dystopian vision of the future, it is a clear-sighted lens on the present.

There is a great deal of seriousness in this book, but its moments of humour, excitement and friendship are no less luminous for it. In fact, the dual existence of oppression and wonder is what makes each of those realities most real. This is a true novel of resistance – one that resets the creep of normalisation, and reminds us of the beauty that can exist in the world.

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