Dave's Book Blog: "Gliff" by Ali Smith

Monday, 12 May 2025

"Gliff" by Ali Smith

Gulliver in the land of the Houyhnhnms?

Two children, Briar and Rose, say goodbye to their mother and return home in the campervan with Leif. But someone has painted a red line around their home so they have to spend the night parked in a supermarket car park. But they wake up to find a red line around their campervan. Leif takes them to an abandoned house, gives them food and money and then leaves. And this is the start of a scary adventure in a dystopian world where even smart-watch wearing children can be Designated Data Collectors and those who are Unverified must hide in the shadows.

And there is a grey horse in a field.

Ali Smith has total control over this narrative, rationing information in driblets. The reader tries to make sense of it and, like a child, pieces together the clues. There is horror but you never see the monsters full-on and that makes them even more terrifying. Especially since the worst thing comes from what is inside each one of us.

Her characterisations are also drawn with a few brief brush strokes and yet they are real people and I was utterly unprepared for the revelatory twist on page 214.

A dystopian masterpiece from a writer at the very top of her game.

Selected quotes:

“It was like they all had their backs to me, even the ones facing me.” (Horse p7)
“If you could take these boards up and look at what had ended up down there in that under-the-boards space it’d look like just dirt and grime. But you'd not just have DNA galore, you'd have the actual matter of what was left of those people and their times. This was a completely different sort of matter, the kind people say doesn't matter when they talk about what history is.” (Horse p 34)
“The grey horse's bones were close to its skin all over it ... It moved with laidback strength and with a real weightiness though it wasn't weighty at all, it was as spare as a bare tree.” (Horse p 47)
“You are bullying me with words longer than the length of my life, she said.” (Horse p 49)
“We can't solve it. But we can still salve it.” (Horse p 52)
“The horse was lightning white, all electricity. The lion was calm, dark, massive-pawed, dripping surreptitiousness. The horse, dismayed. The lion, shifty.” (Horse p 111)
“All the people living here, including the feral children, were right now unverifiables. They were largely unverifiable because of words. One person here had been unverified for saying out loud that a war was a war when it wasn't permitted to call it a war. Another had found herself declared unverifiable for writing online that the killing of many people by another people was a genocide. Another had been unverified for defaming the oil conglomerates by saying they were directly responsible for climate catastrophe. Another had been unverified for speaking at a protest about people's right to protest.” (Power p 162)
“Was a horse more lost to the world, because of no words, or was the horse more found - or even founded - in the world because of no words? Were we in our worded world the ones who were truly deluded about where and what we believed about all the things we had words for?” (Power p 162)
“I heard her voice in my head ... Bri. Don't be stupid. Why do you think they call it a net? Why do you think they call it a web?” (Power p 172)
“Like there was such a thing as a family of words, one that stretched across different languages or touching on each other, hitting or striking each other, acting on each other, influencing each other, agreeing with each other or throwing each other out, disturbing each other, doing all of these things at once.” (Power p178)
“Why are you such a walking question mark? she said to me. You even walk like a question mark would walk if it was a person.” (Power p 193)
“The voids are where you learn what power does and what the word void can mean.” (Lines p 222)