Gliff

Following her dazzling five-novel portrait of our age, the ‘Seasonal’ sequence, Ali Smith returns with the first of two novels which belong together but can be read independently. Gliff – a Scots or Northern word for a glimpse, a shock, a glance - will not only tell its own story but also contain within it a hidden story, to be revealed only in a second novel, Glyph – from the Greek, meaning a mark, carving or symbol -- to be published a year later.

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.