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Gliff #2
Glyph
Not yet published
Expected 29 Jan 26Ghosts 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).
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).
264 pages, Kindle Edition
Expected publication January 1, 2026
4 people are currently reading
936 people want to read
About the author
Ali Smith
151 books5,356 followersAli Smith is a writer, born in Inverness, Scotland, to working-class parents. She was raised in a council house in Inverness and now lives in Cambridge. She studied at Aberdeen, and then at Cambridge, for a Ph.D. that was never finished. In a 2004 interview with writing magazine Mslexia, she talked briefly about the difficulty of becoming ill with chronic fatigue syndrome for a year and how it forced her to give up her job as a lecturer at University of Strathclyde to focus on what she really wanted to do: writing. She has been with her partner Sarah Wood for 17 years and dedicates all her books to her.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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December 13, 2025more literary novels should have sequels
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July 23, 2025yesssssssssssssssssssssssss can't wait
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April 2, 202530 october 2025 release
December 8, 2025
Stunning! The best writing of children since Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend and Yiyun Li's The Book of Goose. All about stories and storytelling, ghosts, sisters and memory. Loved!
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
this was so good! better than gliff in my opinion which i didn't get on well with. ali smith i love u
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews