Glyph is an intellectually stimulating book with layers of meaning, a strong anti-war message, and lots of entertaining wordplay.

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I was eager to read Ali Smith’s new book Glyph after reading its companion book Gliff last year. Smith, an award-winning Scottish author, is known for her playful exploration of language and sharp political observations. 

Gliff is set in a dystopian surveillance state where two children must fend for themselves after their mother disappears. The title comes from a Scottish word meaning a fleeting glimpse or something impermanent. In the novel, a horse named Gliff plays a key role in the story, as it represents the temporary, fragile safety that the siblings find. 

Glyph features two sisters who are estranged as adults but spent their childhood coping with their mother’s death by inventing a ghost named Glyph. Here the title takes the opposite meaning from Gliff and evokes an enduring mark, with war acting as a backdrop to explore memory and permanence. The sisters came up with Glyph after hearing a story an old woman told them about seeing someone completely flattened by the side of the road during the war. Years later, the older sister Petra watches the destruction of Gaza and reflects on how war can flatten people and reduce their lives to rubble. But Glyph shows us how stories and imagination can reanimate people and keep their memories alive. 

Glyph is an intellectually stimulating book with layers of meaning, a strong anti-war message, and lots of entertaining wordplay. The narrative is slippery and a bit hard to pin down, so if you’re looking for a conventional reading experience you may be disappointed. But if you like reading literary puzzles that give you a lot of symbolism to explore, you will find much to enjoy in Glyph, especially if you pair it with a reading of Gliff.