‘Gliff’ by Ali Smith (2025) – 274 pages
In ‘Gliff” the two young girls Briar and Rose are left on their own. Briar, the older sister, is around 13 while Rose is around 11. Briar tells the story.
Here is an example of how the sisters Briar and Rose talk to each other:
Then she said,
Bri. What actually is trust?
Eh, I said. It’s you know.
I don’t, she said.
You trust me, yeah?
First tell me what it is, then I’ll tell you, she said.
Their mother had to leave and is working in another country. Later we learn that their mother was fired from her job for being a whistle blower pointing out the dangers of the chemical that they were making at the weed killer factory where she worked. She has become a UV – an Unverifiable – and thus not welcome in her home country anymore.
“A whistleblower means someone who tells the truth about something when other people don’t want anybody to tell the truth about it.”
Though the daughters have done nothing wrong themselves, they are now Unverifiables too. At first they live on canned food in their old house. Later they move into a communal house with a group of other Unverifiables.
Gliff is the name of a horse that the sisters save from the abattoir and they take into their house (which I had difficulty picturing).
The various strands of this fable or allegory never congealed into a reasonable plot for me. The parts of ‘Gliff’ seemed scattered and disjointed almost to the point of incoherence. There is the story of the two young sisters living on their own with the horse ‘Gliff’ staying in their house. Then suddenly the sisters are living in a communal housing arrangement with other Unverifiables. And then we have the scenes five years later when Briar is more grown up which made even less sense to me.
Supposedly there is some relationship between Orwell’s ‘Brave New World’ and ‘Gliff’, but I could not find any similarities beyond the ominous threats that the modern technologies pose to our human community. Instead of having adults confronting an authoritarian world as in ‘Brave New World’, in ‘Griff’ we have children which leads to an over-simplication and a certain naivety.
I would like to read a coherent novel about why with all our supposedly wonderful new technology such as the world-wide web and cell phones, so many countries are once again descending into dictatorships just as they did before World War II. Ali Smith does point out the ease which these new systems provide for authorities to keep surveillance on their people, However ‘Gliff’ is just too diffuse and perhaps too naive to effectively address the problem.
Grade: C
Tony's Book World 
Posted by Janakay | YouMightAsWellRead on May 13, 2025 at 6:36 PM
Very helpful review, Tony! I’ve almost purchased this one a couple of times but . . . have held off. Smith is one of those novelists that I almost feel I “need” to read; she’s not afraid to experiment/take chances; her stuff always gets good reviews & she clearly has some interesting ideas. For some reason, however, I’ve never quite become a fan, despite liking How to be Both a great deal (it did take a little getting used to, on my part) and was largely o.k. with Autumn. I rather doubt I’ll get around to Gliff, at least not for the next decade or two (if I find an irresistible urge to read Smith, I’ll probably try to pick up with her Seasonal Quartet). In case I change my mind, how graphic was the abattoir stuff or any other animal cruelty points?
BTW — tried to leave a “like” for your post, but WordPress won’t let me (I’ve run into this with a couple of other blogs I follow)
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Posted by Anokatony on May 13, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Hi Janakay,
I too thought ‘How To Be Both’ was wonderful, and that got me enthusiastic about Ali Smith. Then ‘Autumn’ was a bit of a letdown and then ‘Spring’ was a total disaster. I should have avoided ‘Gliff’ at that point.
I too have had that Word Press problem liking other people’s posts but didn’t realize it was happening to me too. Thanks.
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Posted by Janakay | YouMightAsWellRead on May 13, 2025 at 7:36 PM
It seems we have similar reactions to Ms. Smith! So glad you liked How to be Both; I was really pulling for it to win the Booker that year.
The “like” function seemed to have worked just now . . .
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Posted by Anokatony on May 13, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Great minds think alike. :)
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Posted by Rach on May 16, 2025 at 8:31 AM
This is on my to be read list, but I might hold off a little longer based on your review :D
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Posted by Anokatony on May 16, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Occasionally I find a writer who might be effective for a lot of other people but not for me.
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Posted by This Reading Life on May 16, 2025 at 10:00 AM
I was wondering if this was going to be a fractured fairytale version of Sleeping Beauty with the names of the two girls, but it would seem not!
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Posted by Anokatony on May 16, 2025 at 6:52 PM
I definitely agree with Ali Smith’s position opposing authoritarianism, but for me the fairy tale approach, Briar and Rose, just didn’t work. It seemed too naive to address the problem.
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