Ali Smith’s Gliff is set “once upon a time, not very far from now”. It is a kind of fairytale of the future in which two children, Briar and Rose, navigate a world which seems increasingly baffling and hostile.
Gliff is the first of a planned pair of novels – the second to be called Glyph. Although the two words sound identical, their meanings are quite different. The Scottish word “gliff” means a shock, fright or sudden glimpse. A “glyph”, meanwhile, is a written character or symbol. There’s similarly insistent wordplay in Gliff. It reflects its preoccupation with how meaning is created – and destroyed.
Smith’s latest novel shares many of the same concerns as her recent Seasonal Quartet (2016-2020): the effects of climate change, the plight of refugees, the growth of intolerance and authoritarianism. But Gliff is set in a dystopian Britain where all these problems have intensified in frightening ways. Smith therefore follows in the footsteps of a growing number of literary novelists who have turned to science fiction in recent years, as boundaries between genres become less rigid.
