Gliff

Here is a voice that moves with lightness and precision, where bravery and goodness triumph in spirit over jeopardy and fear . . . Smith is good at fable-ising, and at taking a young perspective in order to question afresh systems and inherited knowledge . . . Smith’s fiction teaches with vitality that there is no such thing as a futile question * Financial Times *
A vivid, alluringly chatty novelist capable of deft and unforeseeable sidesteps . . . Smith’s new novel is a charm . . . Smith excels at the creation of a lost, curious, intelligent mind adrift in a world of surprises and the unforeseen . . . Smith has created a gloriously strange world * Daily Telegraph *
Gliff is one of Smith’s most propulsive stories – a dark adventure with high stakes, which, despite its bleak subject matter, is still a sparklingly crisp read . . . Typically tantalising stuff from one of our most playful writers . . . [Smith] is as frisky as ever, peppering with puns, and making hay with homonyms imbues her characters with this linguistic exuberance . . . A new Ali Smith book is always an event -- Holly Williams * i *
Unendingly playful [and] mind-expanding . . . Gliff draws battle lines between art, language and Big Tech . . . The meaning and meaningless of our words is an overarching theme of Smith’s oeuvre . . . Smith does not tire of the wonder of language [and] has mastered a style that is both disconcerting and utterly humane * New Statesman *
Ali Smith stakes her claim amongst the most inventive living British writers . . . Gliff is another fizzing firework display, with conceptual shenanigans and running prose put in the service of hot-button social issues . . . a freewheeling narrative that mixes jeopardy-laden drama with restless digression on everything from agrochemicals to AI * Daily Mail *
As usual with Smith, the gorgeous prose will swirl in your head. Gliff is challenging and enigmatic -- Martin Chilton * Independent *
If Smith’s recent books were a handbook for 21st-century life, Gliff is a warning as to what will happen if we ignore their lessons * Observer *
A poetic, dystopian puzzlebox . . . a story about two children who have lost their mother, with moments that are spare and full of powerful feeling . . . Gliff is above all a book that forces you to be comfortable with ambiguity. It will be partnered next year by Glyph, a companion novel which promises to reveal a story hidden in this one. It will be a joy to puzzle it out * Evening Standard *
Fizzily fresh and vibrant . . . A dark vision brightened by the engaging craft of an inventive writer * Kirkus (starred review) *
One of our most playful and political writers * Guardian *
Feels like an instant classic -- Anna Bonet * i *
As she takes aim at some of the more worrying aspects of the modern world, Smith employs sublime wordplay, a tribute to language and its possibilities * Daily Mirror *
Entertaining and sophisticated and clever * The Scotsman *
The inimitable Ali Smith returns to beguile . . . Smith movingly explores the notion of resistance, and asks, in a voice full of hope, what a world should, and could, be * Harper’s Bazaar *
A literary collosus . . . Gliff is playful, challenging, and like nothing else we’ve recommended this year! * Bookshop Tales *