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From a literary master, a novel of ghosts and history and family legacy, of the unexpected acts of care that shine light into our dark.
Ghosts don't exist.
They don't. End of.
Story, however.
It is haunting.
Everything tells it.
It all starts when Petra and her little sister Patch hear a horrifying story from the past and find themselves making up a ghost.
Is it imaginary? Is it real?
Then it all starts again thirty years later when Petra, now estranged from Patch, finds a phantom horse kicking the furniture to pieces in her bedroom.
What to do? She phones her sister.
In a chiarascuro dance through our increasingly antagonistic era, Glyph asks if we're attending to the history that's made us and to the history we're making.
A funny, warm and clear-eyed take on where we are now, Glyph is about what our imaginations are for and how, in a broken, brutal and divided time, we rekindle care, solidarity, resistance and openness. This anti-war novel, Ali Smith's most soulful, playful and vital yet, is a work of lightness that goes deep to counter the forces currently flattening the modern world.
"Smith embraces angular, fragmented storytelling along with slippery and allegorical messaging, though her characterizations are lively and crystal clear... An abstract and mordant meditation on the long aftereffects of violence." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A clever and enjoyable companion piece to [Gliff]... Smith effectively deploys narrative devices that will be familiar to readers of her fiction—precocious children, rapturous wordplay, and references to current events... [An] accomplished and gifted writer." —Publishers Weekly
"Smith deploys misdirection, humor, and the voice of Patch's teenage daughter to raise issues of morality, power, and conflict. Described as a modern Virginia Woolf and as a Nobelist-in-waiting, the multi-award-winning and Man Booker–nominated Smith is a modern oracle." —Library Journal
"Rich with [Smith's] sparkling digressions, literary allusion, and social conscience... [Glyph] celebrates the power of civil disobedience through one act of decency at a time." —Booklist
This information about Glyph was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: © Christian Sinibaldi
Ali Smith is the author of many works of fiction, including, most recently, Companion Piece, the "Seasonal Quartet," Public library and other stories, and How to be both, which won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize, and the Costa Novel Award. Her work has four times been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. Most recently, she won the George Orwell Prize for Political Fiction for Summer. Born in Inverness, Scotland, she lives in Cambridge, England.
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