ŷ������

Every Ali Smith is my favorite Ali Smith, and I still have a way to go in her oeuvre. GLIFF is a near future speculative novel, an imaginative mix of wordsmithing (word ”smith�� ing) and dystopian, domestic drama. Home, family, abandonment, class shaming and system ostracization are potent and pervasive. Plot is secondary. Word meanings are meant, for the protagonists, to resist a totalitarian Britain, and is perhaps the best weapon against the country’s extremes of surveillance, exclusion, and next-level canceling.

Two siblings, Briar and Rose, are young teens caring for each other in a strange house in an unfamiliar city. A red line of paint was drawn around their family house, which is a signal for imminent destruction. It also means the family are “unverifiables,�� i.e. marginalized, cast out of society. Their working mother has disappeared, and their thoughtful, kind stepfather takes steps to protect them by secluding them away from home. The mood, atmosphere, and pace create a ratcheting up of paranoia. I had no idea what would unfold from page to page.

Smith’s world-building is astonishing. She’s so fluid, with subtle inclusions and “word�� building that is worth discussion. Highly interpretive with some grounding themes of displacement and shunning, and be prepared for inherent violence. GLIFF is a treat for the reader that enjoys wordplay, absurdity that invokes madness and heartbreak.

What is a gliff? There’s a page-and-a-half to describe the various meanings, and also refers to a horse. The readers should discover on their own.

“Like there was such a thing as a family of words, one that stretched across different lnguages all touching on each other, hitting or striking each other, acting on each other, influencing each other, agreeing with each other or throwing each other out, disturbing each other, doing all of these things at once.��