Description de l’éditeur
'Playful, bold, tender . . . in Glyph we see a major British writer answering the call of the day' Guardian
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 chiaroscuro 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.
A standalone novel, it’s family to Gliff (2024).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Booker finalist Smith offers a clever and enjoyable companion piece to her 2025 novel, Gliff. Growing up in the 1990s, sisters Petra and Patch Wild are unsettled by wartime stories told at a family party, such as one about a soldier in WWI who was executed for putting a blinded horse out of its misery. They deal with their terror by creating a game in which they communicate with a made-up ghost. As adults, the sisters become estranged. Halfway through the novel, Petra is visited in her bedroom by a ghostlike horse. Unsure if she's going crazy, she leaves a voicemail with Patch, asking for help, and the novel takes on exciting new dimensions over the course of their reunion, as Patch's foster child Billie gets to know Petra for the first time, and the three of them explore what makes a family and a future. Smith effectively deploys narrative devices that will be familiar to readers of her fiction—precocious children, rapturous wordplay, and references to current events (the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine factor into the plot)—but her commentaries on AI can feel obvious and pedantic ("Every person has a soul. And no machine ever will"). Still, even a minor work from this accomplished and gifted writer remains a pleasure to explore.
