I don't generally love a dystopian novel but Ali Smith is such a wonderful writer. I loved my time with the text. She writes a really fully rounded character. Masterful.

In Ali Smith's deeply unsettling "Gliff," the reader spends several key days with people attempting to navigate life in a near-future dystopia that resembles England. Part of what makes the book so powerful is that you can see the likely outcomes of many current political and economic trends brought to vivid life. What if we stop sending kids to school and instead rely on devices to educate them? What if everyone's behavior is tracked at all times? What if corporations rely not only on that system of surveillance but also on forced labor of the young and infirm? A young girl named Rose and her older sibling Briar/Bri find themselves unchaperoned and homeless. Will they be able to survive? At what cost? And what does it mean to try to exist at the margins of such a merciless society? Not an easy read in 2025, but a very worthwhile one.

This novel is at once enigmatic and opaque, and yet authentic and deeply personal. The protagonist, Briar, and their younger sister, Rose, are two children set adrift in a not-too-distant dystopian future. They are funny and endearing, and you will surely love them. Rose, especially, is a naive sage who shimmers on the page. Her characterization is so strong that you will find it easy to imagine her as a leader who could eventually fight back against the state apparatus.

I loved this book and how the author explores themes of family, perspective, resistance, and surveillance. Sections of the novel contain a dark whimsy, not unlike Alice in Wonderland. I hope there is a sequel - I want to read more of Rose and Briar.

I have always loved Ali Smith, but Gliff has made me LOVE Ali Smith. This is quiet and beautiful and moving and a little strange. And I just really highly recommend everyone read this.

This was my first book by Ali Smith and perhaps I should have gone with something else first but even though I don’t think that I really vibe with this I didn’t totally dislike it either. There were parts of it that I liked very much and other parts that I found to be forced and what felt to me like trying too hard to be literary and metaphorical. Although I will fully acknowledge that it might just be a preference thing and I am just not somebody that enjoys getting too deep in the metaphor and symbolism world, this stuff tends to feel like something again to magical realism at times.

I did feel that there was some interesting parts of this, the dystopian setting was very brave New World, only the feminist perspective served i as a stark contrast to the more male centric Huxley. period I also enjoyed the commentary on the divide between the wealthy and the poor, the way Smith chose to tackle and examine this felt very blunt and stripped of all excuse. This is a topic that’s very relevant to our times and I felt Smith’s prospectives an opinion in the world she created.

Now that being said I still think that I may not be the perfect reader for this and that the right audience would appreciate this a lot more. Whenever I read a book like this I often question the necessity of certain elements and feel that the author could have gotten his or her point across in a much more Accessible way and that would not have distracted from the authors implied intelligence. To be perfectly honest it’s hard for me too not feel that a lot of of the book is a bit of an affectation, meaning there is a deliberate attempt at displaying one’s intellect through complex and complicated means, as if being complicated is inherently more intelligent than simplicity which is not the case. Again I think this may have just not been for me and others would probably like this a lot more, or I don’t know maybe it’s the type of book that people read and don’t fully understand but because it is written by a “literary“ author who is known for her intellectualism & complex writing they wind up thinking that it was great and sounded and felt so smart even though in reality a lot of of it went over their heads or just missed the mark entirely. I feel a lot of these types of books end up getting very high ratings because people believe that the author is a eyebrow author and so thus is automatically deserving of a higher rating

I never read Ali Smith before and I need to catch up on her backlist. This book was hands-down amazing. Haunting, lyrical, eerily prescient and at times horrifying—yet it somehow retained a sense of innocence and hope, which I think has a lot to do with the fact that the main characters were children (for the majority of the novel).

I wanted to share a passage that I particularly loved:
The children in that keyring photo looked like they were having a really great day. There was no such thing as AI children. You were either an alive one, or someone who’d once been a child and was now older, or a dead one; even if the children in the photo were advertising models –  which did seem most likely the more I thought about it –  then they were still children, or they’d been children once. Well, provided they weren’t invented by a computer collating thousands of digital images down into one single child then another and another, people who’d never existed. Even so, even the thousands of fragments of images AI would use to make a non- existent child had to have come from children who’d been complete children once. Where were they now? All of them, the maybe- real ones cupping their chins so happily here in the sun in the photo and all those ones whose images had been fragmented into digital splinters and borrowed and used to make up an aggregate image of a child who’d never existed. What were they doing in the world at this precise moment, the people these maybe- real children had become and the people the thousands of splintered borrowed children had become?

Gorgeous, gorgeous writing.

Absolutely pick this one up! Thanks so much to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor—and to NetGalley for my review copy. This one is out now!

Ali Smith crafts a gripping and unsettling tale set in a dystopian world where screens dominate, not through AI fears, but by isolating individuals through addictive personal devices. The novel explores how this addiction leads to deep alienation and fractured human connections.

As resources like lithium dwindle, exploitation rises, and a totalitarian regime takes hold, Smith critiques the erosion of societal and familial bonds. The story feels disturbingly relevant, offering a powerful commentary on the dangers of technology’s growing influence.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC I read in exchange for my honest review.

like percival everett's JAMES, this is a retelling(ish) of a classic i really didn't like that i think did a better job.

this takes on BRAVE NEW WORLD, which i found to be kind of basic and silly and also very misogynistic, and makes it more relevant to our times, and therefore scarier, and realer. it gives the reader more to chew on, both at the writing and at the thematic level. i am very impressed and excited we'll be getting more.

A story based in a dystopian world centred around two children and a horse. An autocratic, dictatorial administration has taken over. Rose and Briar's mother and stepfather have disappeared living them to fend for themselves. This book is part of a duology and hence the full story will unfold only when we read part two. The writing style is lyrical, you have to pay attention to detail. Otherwise you may have to come back for a re-read. I can't say I was blown away although I have heard so much about the author. I am definitely looking to read some of her earlier works. Recommend for die-hard fans of Ali Smith

Thank you Netgalley and Knopf Publishing for the ARC

Not for me, I could tell from the first page. Don’t get me wrong, Ali Smith is obviously a talented and classical writer. But I simply don’t enjoy her writing. I read Autumn and dnfed it. I did finish this one though, and I did find it more enjoyable. The plot was simple, the writing brilliant, and the characters one dimensional (probably because the writing caused me to reread every other sentence). All this aside, I would still recommend this to some niche readers.

Gliff is a classic Ali Smith novel, in that it's wholly original, a little weird, and almost eerily poignant in its commentary on our current social and political climate. Set in a seemingly near-distant future, Smith's universe here is alternative and even post-apocalyptic at times, but in ways that are familiar to readers— extreme crackdowns on immigration and citizenship, and brutal enforcement of the gender binary, for example. It's actually terrifying, in certain scenes, to realize how close we really are to some of these seemingly-dystopian governmental control tactics (especially in a Trump 2.0 world). Essentially, and as usual, Smith has her finger so perfectly on the pulse (and even in terms of pop culture— I very much appreciated the Taylor Swift references).

I will say that I wasn't as completely enthralled by the story as I was for Smith's Seasonal Quartet (though I did still cry, so that actually says a lot about the Seasonal books). Ultimately, though, Smith is a genius, this was genius, and I will continue to read her work whenever I need to hear from someone who gets it— the terrifying ordeal we are currently in, politically, and the hope we desperately need to get through it. Not many authors today are as important as Ali Smith.

Thank you to Pantheon and Net Galley for the e-arc!

I really, really loved the story but the writing style was a little hard for me to follow. I think this is entirely a matter of taste and time. I think I will pick this one up again in a few weeks and try again because I think it's a story I want to digest more thoroughly.

This is my first Ali Smith book. The lack of most punctuation is disorienting at times, and somewhat annoying at others. The story is prescient though and I liked the protagonist and his plucky sister.

Ali Smith returns with Gliff, a novel that feels like an abstract painting—brilliant, layered, and open to interpretation. Her signature playfulness with language and themes of art, time, and humanity make this another thought-provoking, unconventional read.

🌿 Expect:
✔ Lyrical, experimental prose
✔ A fluid, shifting narrative
✔ A meditation on change and perception

If you love books that challenge form and invite you to read between the lines, this is one to watch.

Just like every Ali Smith book, this is masterfully and beautifully written. But I’m afraid I just don’t need any more totalitarian government-driven dystopias.

This isn’t a new concept and it’s one that has really been overused in the last 20 or so years. I think there’s an issue in dystopian and speculative fiction of this sort, which is that all dystopias largely are alike, both in terms of how a society gets there and how it functions after it arrives. It ceases to be an interesting concept unless someone reinvents how it works, and while Smith’s lyrical prose adds value to the novel, the plot and premise are no different from the rest in this overcrowded subgenre.

I suppose I’m a bit sour on dystopias in general because it sort of feels like we live in the beginning of one now in 2025 America, which leaves me feeling a bit like the whole genre has ceased to have any fantastical entertainment value and also that it needs to be reclassed as a subset of Horror rather than Fantasy/Speculative Fiction. And of course, it’s not much fun to read something like this if it starts to feel like potential nonfiction for the not so distant future.

I think there’s a segment of the reading population that actually copes with real world issues by reading this kind of novel, and if that’s you I expect you’ll like this more than I did. But I still think that because we see so many books that deal in this particular breed of speculative dystopia, we need to demand more originality of narrative out of the authors who continue to use it, no matter how beautifully they write.

Ali Smith doing what she does best! You have to get over the hump of accepting that Bri and Rose, the sibling main characters, love words as cleverly//in the same way that Smith does, but then you're in for an experience. The pacing and dialogue is deceptively breezy, the plot ticks along, and a wide cast of supporting characters are rendered quickly but precisely. I always feel like there's a bit of hokiness when authors get around to naming and describing the elements of a dystopia: who the oppressed peoples are, what the devices are called, etc. There's a little clunkiness in the world-building (anybody understand what the machines were doing??), but it's forgiven on the basis of the humor of the dialogue and the surprising and perfect details of the children's lives that make their relationship feel so real. Excited to read the next novel!

this book really fits the mood of my 2025 so far: creepingly dystopian, but maintaining some hope, some avenues of joy and resistance. also, there's a horse, and i was once a Horse Girl, so that had deep appeal.

i loved Gliff top to bottom, but i want to call out the pacing first of all because it worked especially well for me. the way the story and the world unfolds, through the perception of a sheltered kid—and periodically, their future self—really captured the sensation i have right now, of continually learning new and increasingly worse information about how my country and others are actually being run, and where they're going. the innocence of Bri and their sister Rose, and how untouched they are by the literal and figurative brainwashing of technology, creates an opportunity to slowly explore more and more dystopian ideas and experiences that are already happening to other people around them. it's like watching a mystery unfold, and then getting smacked by understanding when Bri's future self interjects; i went on a roller coaster of fear for Bri and Rose, delight at their small and spirited acts of defiance, and the dread/hope mix that comes from knowing where a character ends up.

all of the side characters are exciting as well, real and specific in their personhoods, including the titular horse Gliff. that realism, all the weird idiosyncrasies of actual people, contrasts so effectively with the mundane horror of the world around them and with the very large messages the story is engaging with about knowledge, and community, and liberation, and kindness. about how easy it is to become a part of a terrible machine, and also that there's still hope to break out of it and create disruption on your way. that last part is a hard concept sometimes—that even a person who has been molded to do awful things, for whom cruelty has become normal, can reach a tipping point or find a way out, and what they do next is as important to consider as what they did before. it's a theme that's coming up for me across my media consumption, and it's one i am really trying to integrate into my thinking about the real world.

that was a little bit of a ramble, but this book has me thinking big thoughts! overall i really, really enjoyed it, and i'll be thinking about it for a long time.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pantheon for this eARC!

I was first introduced to this book via the book community on TikTok a while back. I love narratives that really play and experiment with prose to help tell a story. I wasn't sure what to really expect going into this book, but I loved every bit of it. It was part Brave New World, part Kafka fever, and Orwellian themes. Also, this was my introduction to Ali Smith's writing---and I can't wait to read more! This was an absolute perfect book for the time we're living in right now. I highly recommend this!

I am a big fan of Ali Smith. I devoured the Seasonal Quartet and eagerly awaited the related Companion Piece. So i was excited to see that she was writing a duology of sorts, starting with Gliff.

Gliff is narrated by Bri/Briar, as they look back on the weeks following their abandonment by their mother and her partner Leif. They, and their younger sister Rose, are "Unverifiables", which leaves them homeless and on their own. Rose forms a bond with a horse destined for the slaughterhouse, who she names Gliff, Rose and Bri's discovery of a hidden community of other Unverifiables leads to a series of events that call into question their status in the state. I am purposefully vague because it is better to read and discover the story without knowing too much of the plot.

"Gliff" is a word with a slippery definition. It refers to a glimpse, a sudden moment, or a scare. When Rose names the horse Gliff, she does not know just how apt the word is. The siblings live in a liminal world, existing only in glimpses to those in charge in order to evade being sent to re-education facilities. The world that Smith paints is seen in glimpses as well: the dystopia is never fully explained, you only understand what you need to for the story. The vagueness gives the story more a sense of unease.

I have mixed feelings about this story. First and foremost, I think it requires a close read, which I did not give it. I think it demands even a re-read to catch all the nuance (I feel this way about many of Smith's books). Smith presents a lot of interesting ideas about citizenship, gender, belonging, and the power of government, but I wanted. more. My hope is that she will continue to flesh these out in the companion novel. That said, the writing is excellent, as always. It was eerie reading this book at this time and place, a feeling similar to when I read Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. Overall, it was an engrossing and unsettling read even if I didn't love it.

Thank you Pantheon for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Gliff by Ali Smith is, by design, a murky dystopian in both vibes and clarity — at least at the outset. This is in no small part because it focuses on a family that lives on the fringes of society, specifically two young siblings: Bri (the elder, first-person narrator) and Rose. That they are outsiders is only compounded by their youth, not to mention the way their mother shielded them from the bonds of an increasingly restrictive world. When the siblings are separated from their mother, they are on their own and we are on that journey with them. So their ignorance is our ignorance. And much of Gliff’s narrative elegance is in the way Bri and Rose traverse these dangerous outskirts with perspectives that make clear not only what is lacking from their knowledge of the surrounding world, but also and perhaps most importantly, what’s been instilled.

And amid all that they are introduced to a horse they name Gliff. And what does that mean when we name a thing?

Bri and Rose are the Unverifiable, those who live outside the realm of an authority obsessed with data and classification, making it that much easier to ensure the surfs support the ruling class. Gliff is clearly concerned about our data-driven obsessions and how they may be used to label, categorize, dehumanize and restrict. The irony is that the very words we use to label, name and classify change over time and through various domineering languages. And Smith toys with this idea over and over again, exploiting both its power and impotence.

This is a book that loves words. It’s chapter breaks are riddled with plays on words and echoes of titles you will be familiar with. And this playfulness is what separates Gliff from nearly every other dystopian novel that I’ve read. It’s more curious when you think it’s going to be preachy (there’s no need for preaching since the evils are so fundamental).

In the first half of the book, the more sinister elements Bri and Rose are avoid are gelatinous, less defined and less understood — especially to them. In the second half, however, the architecture and design of this surveillance state comes further into form and in all sharp angles. You will recall the harshness of Orwell’s 1984 and narcotic numbing of Huxley’s Brave New World.

But Gliff, the first in an intended duology, maintains a playfulness and a spirit that also reminds me of Station Eleven. The story is light on plot and often feels like something between a dream and a nightmare with a child’s lightness in spirit under truly bleak circumstances. The words we utilize to tell such stories may change and are constantly redefined, but together they build something more essential, longer lasting and forever inspirational.

4.44 / 5