Book Review: Gliff

Gliff
By Ali Smith
Review by Renata

‘Gliff’, a word from Scottish vernacular, can mean a glance, a touch of illness, or a sudden fright – as well as many other definitions. Here, it is the name given to a horse that becomes a symbol for resistance and freedom in a more dystopian world than Smith has explored in previous novels. Her young protagonists, the fairytale inflected Briar and Rose, are ‘Unverifiables’ – those deemed by a totalitarian state to have no rights or status.

Their world is an uncomfortably familiar version of the surveillance capitalism we already know, in which biometric iris scanners and personalised algorithmic propaganda are no longer the stuff of science fiction. Bri, the narrator of the story, is a classic Smith creation: a child/adult who views the world with keen clarity from a liminal place between life stages, between genders, and, here, from the dangerous hinterland of statelessness. There is darkness in this story, but it’s leavened by Smith’s ever-playful storytelling, and by her characters’ capacity for resistance and hope.

For fans of Italo Calvino, Namwali Serpell, and Sandra Newman.