Glyph

Gliff #2

by Ali Smith

From a literary master, a novel of ghosts and history and family legacy, of the unexpected acts of care that shine light into our dark.

Ghosts 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 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.

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.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, British Literature, Science Fiction, Audiobook, Novels, Contemporary

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2026

About the author

Ali 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.

Reviews

[emma]

more literary novels should have sequels

[Ari Levine · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5, rounded down.

Not one of Smith's stronger efforts, and this one feels phoned-in on autopilot. Glyph delivers everything that you'd expect from her oeuvre post-How to be Both: clever punning wordplay, vivid historical irruptions, precocious adolescents' dialogue, preaching-to-the-choir political commentary, broken family dynamics, slippery metafictional feints, paeans to the transcendent power of art.

The characters in Glyph have read its companion piece Gliff, but this one is happening in our own dystopian timeline-- with airstrikes falling on Gaza-- rather than in a properly fictional dystopian nightmare. Petra and Patch are estranged sisters revisiting a traumatic episode from their childhoods-- involving the ghost of a flattened WWII soldier-- until an escaped-horse-in-an-apartment emergency reunites them.

In my review of Gliff last year, I expressed my concern that "Smith has been over-working the same thematic ground." I'm going to double down on that this time.

Thanks to Netgalley and Pantheon Books for giving me an ARC of this in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.5) I'm cured again, for now.

[Henk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of wordcraft, sisterly relationships and a strong anti-war message. I felt this is a less strong and more familiar, at times even maybe preachy, contemporary pendant to Gliff
Well.
Family almost always means someone somewhere doesn’t get to be it.

Ali Smith brings us Petra (elder and the initial narrator) and Patricia (Patch) Wild, two sisters now estranged. Glyph is very much an anti-war novel, starting off with recollections of cruelty from the first and second world wars, involving a blind horse, court marshalling and a person literally made 2D. There are links to saint Bartholomew, flayed alive and often depicted with his skin on his arm.
Gliff, the companion book, makes an appearance as a novel send by Patricia to Petra. Billie, the socially engaged (dare I say woke?) adopted daughter brings the narrative firmly into contemporary issues, when she is arrested for something she Could have said to have been.

At times Glyph feels a bit formulaic, with English flags on lampposts, people being arrested for being more than 5 in a place, a main character losing a job due to AI and police action for having a scarf that sympathises with Gaza: this felt to me like a bit exaggerated bingo card of all the things in the British news of the last twelve months projected to a couple of rather cardboard characters.
Which is even explicitly recognised:
I’m an ancient fragment. Happy to be a broken piece of something. Sad to be it too. I think I’m what used to be called a flat character.

There are clever linkages, including a dead journalist and vocal cords as symbols of free speech being in danger. But overall very little feels at stake for our so morally upstanding characters that their reflections on the world feel even a bit preachy or performative, rather than heartfelt or surprising.

Quotes:
He told us about St Augustine and the body being the horse and the soul its rider and that the two couldn’t be parted or that’d be the journey over.

What am I doing wrong? God. the youth of today are draconian beyond belief.
We have to, Bill said.

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]]

yesssssssssssssssssssssssss can't wait

[Annabelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh Ali…. Wat heeft dit boek me weer gepakt, opgetild, ergens anders neergezet, mijn gedachten doen dwarrelen, prikkelen, twijfelen. Wat is haar taal rijk, en wat zijn de witte delen tussen de regels vol. Wat is verbeelding een zegen, en wat is Ali Smith’s verhalende verbeelding een kracht. Wat zijn haar personages rijk, grappig, hyper intelligent en actueel. Zij is de konigin van het persoonlijke universeel en politiek maken en wat is ze fan-tas-tisch. Glyph ga ik sowieso nog een keer lezen, ik ben verdrietig dat het uit is. 4,5 ster !

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I greatly respect Ali Smith for naming two adjacent novels Gliff and Glyph, while sympathising with librarians and booksellers who'll have to deal with the resulting confusion. Glyph is a sequel to Gliff that takes place earlier in time, seemingly following different versions of the same main characters, Petra and Patch, also another horse. Ali Smith can get away with such literary shenanigans because she's a stunningly skillful writer. Her prose is uniquely rhythmic, fluid, and gloriously pleasurable to read:

Ghosts don't exist.
They don't. End of.
Story, however.
It is haunting.
Everything tells it.
A single detail tells it endlessly, powerful how it does, how story moves through all the modernity in its ancient green clothes and shows up everything that thinks itself new as transparent, shambling, same old; story's as old as the hills itself and as brand new as everything that manages, against the odds, to grow fresh and new on those old hills.
I am, I realise now, quite frightened at its wildness and its hugeness and its persuasiveness and pervasiveness.
Perhaps my skin is thinner, after all, than everybody else decided it was.

Glyph approaches the genocide in Gaza via a teenager skipping school and family trauma via a ghost horse. The plot is loose, which again Ali Smith can carry off because her writing is so wonderful. I found this a more fragmentary novel than her best, which are Spring and Summer in my opinion, although that fits the zeitgeist. It also got a little bit too metatextual for my taste by letting its characters comment directly upon Gliff. Again, that could also reflect the solipsistic turn in media analysis. Nonetheless I found Glyph powerful and beautiful by turns. Ali Smith consistently has great insight into Britain's social fractures and anxieties, which she examines in a lyrical style. I particularly loved this turn of phrase:

You're my possible aunt, Bill says. I've got a choice here, even if you two don't.
How am I doing so far? Petra says.
Seven out of ten, Bill says.
Round about a B. That's not good enough, Petra says.
More a B plus, Bill says.
That's still not very good. What am I doing wrong? God. The youth of today are draconian beyond belief, Petra says.
We have to be, Bill says. If you're going to find yourself living in Draconia, best to speak some draconian. Just so you know what the signposts say.

[Lien · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can’t say I understood everything but I sure loved reading this.

[Ruben · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5

This is only my second Ali Smith, having only read Gliff before Glyph.

I think one of the things that makes her so good is that the characters continuously refer back to things that happened a few pages or a few chapters ago. It makes you feel fully involved and part of the conversation.

Whereas Gliff was dystopian, Glyph is set in current times, but there is a similar sense of disorientation in the first part of the book as you only get to see glimpses of the overall story, that you can then piece together in the second part.

The political messages are unapologetically 'blatant' - I had no problem with that at all: it's how people talk and think. In fact, the dialogues are a real joy too and (most) witticisms too.

I will admit I would have liked a stronger link with Gliff and see some of its open ends closed.

As it is, I will very likely need a re-read (or a good long analysis by a more thorough reader) to uncover all the interconnections.

[Lesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ali Smith is a critically acclaimed Scottish writer & academic. In addition to her published novels & short story collections Smith has also written several plays (mostly unpublished) and is a regular contributor to a number of UK publications.
Glyph, a companion piece to 2024’s Gliff, is her 15th published novel.

The story is narrated, mostly via recollection, by sisters Petra & Patch. Close in childhood, the sisters are estranged following the death of their father. Contact is reestablished when Patch, who is reading Gliff on the recommendation of her adopted daughter, Bill, is reminded of events from their childhood and sends a copy of the book to Petra. Petra having split with her partner as well as losing her job later calls on Patch for help when the past makes a dramatic reappearance in her life.

Smith uses the framework of the siblings looking back on a traumatic period in their childhoods to cut a swathe through history placing stories of the quashing of dissenting individuals during the first & second world wars side by side with current political events ranging from government moves to repress protest, the exploitation of increasing xenophobia & racism to the genocide in Gaza.

As always with Ali Smith, there is plenty to go at. Glyph incorporates themes of individuality, independence of thought, how to find one’s way in a post-truth world.

“But I think partly I was also sick because of the pile on, the people saying it wasn’t true, because I also saw how, like, there’s this huge mechanism and it’s acting on everybody. It is such a simple mechanism it is actually stealthy brilliance. You just say something that’s the truth is a lie. Or that something that’s a lie is the truth. Then the matter of something being true or not stops being about truth or lies and becomes about choosing a side and it drops itself like a blanket over everything, a blanket the size of the sky – no, maybe more like a net, like a gigantic fishing net,”

The interconnectedness of everything, how the past informs the present, what is eternal in us are recurrent themes in Smith’s work. In Glyph, we see history loop and repeat, how the traumas of the past haunt the psyche- both collectively & individually.

Glyph also addresses the role literature & specifically the novel plays in today’s world. Petra, whose own bookshelves contain predominantly factual works is not as impressed by Gliff as either Patch or Bill,

“Yeah. It was okay, I say. It was quite good. I thought it was quite well written and everything. A bit too dark for me. A bit too clever-clever, a bit too on the nose politically, for a novel. I’d have preferred a bit more world building. And what’s with all that horse stuff? It could’ve been a bit more sci-fi. But yeah, I mean thanks for sending it.”

Smith has long been an advocate of the novel as a political form that connects “word & world”. Her 2017 Goldsmiths Prize lecture talks at length about the topic

“What can the novel do, in the age of Trump, in the age of the Nazis, in the age again of wounding and widening division and bordering? It can tell us where and how the people of the age are living it. It can tell us what it means, on the continuum, if we choose to continue to live like that. It can give us an experience that’s emotionally intelligent, a dimensionalising, inclusive experience.”

One review I read of Gliff was critical of Smith’s spelling things out too much, the reviewer felt it lessened the dread a reader experiences with writers such as Kafka where it is left to the imagination. Sometimes though things do need to be spelt out. In Glyph Ali Smith is being even more ‘blatant’ - to use her own word - naming names & carving it in stone.

If this makes the book sound heavy going, that isn’t the case at all. This is the most playful of Smith’s novels that I have read to date. Those of the same generation as Smith who are familiar with UK culture will immediately recognise Petra & Patch as the names of the first two Blue Peter dogs, Petra being the mother of Patch. I like to think of that as Smith having fun with us trying to puzzle that one out
As per usual, humour is never far below the surface and it is a delight to experience the absolute magic Smith works with words - turning language inside out and upside down. She has just as much fun with form - Smith stepping in as herself to direct the action, characters referring to themselves as ‘flat’, rather than rounded. In a time when language is hijacked, distorted and played back in its mirror world form it is sheer pleasure to see someone capable of turning it back around again.

There were a couple of occasions whilst reading Glyph that I thought of Omar El Akkad’s disillusionment at his faith in the ideals of the west. It is refreshing to see Smith nail her colours firmly to the mast.


Gliff & Glyph, hand in hand.
Several reviews have likened the pairing of Gliff & Glyph to Smiths’s 2014 novel How To Be Both made up of two separate but intertwined stories set centuries apart. The stories can be read independently and in either order - the book was issued in two editions, one leading with the contemporary story, the other with that set during the Renaissance.
Gliff & Glyph are complete novels in their own right. Reading both adds an extra dimension. Order doesn’t really matter, although personally, I am pleased I read them in the order of publication.
There are a number of parallels that can be drawn between Gliff & Glyph. Both are centred on siblings with ‘absent’ parents. Both have their biggest hope in the young.
The story of the ruler who killed his enemy only to be haunted by his death echoes the story of The Tyrant & The Ashes told by Ayesha Falcon in Gliff. Petra - the ‘rose-city of Jordan’ with buildings carved directly into the landscape brings to mind the caves that Rose & her companions fled to, as well as indirectly referencing Rose herself.
And of course those horses.

[Annie Tate Cockrum · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book! Nobody is doing it like Ali Smith. She writes with so much heart. Glyph is a sister novel to Smith’s earlier work Gliff - the two exist on separate planes but are loosely connected. There is a real playfulness to Smith’s writing that always delights me - no matter the subject she is writing about it seems like she approaches it with a sense of whimsy. Often she writes from the perspective of children which I think lends itself to a whimsical way of looking at the world. Glyph is about storytelling and sisterhood - following two young girls in childhood and then revisiting them once they’ve grown up. I’m so thankful to have gotten a chance to read an advanced copy and recommend all of y’all snag a copy when it comes out on May 19th.

[Ryan Davison · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1996, two young sisters are at a family anniversary party when an old lady tells them about a flattened body she encountered on a French road during WWII. An odd story indeed but it begins older sister, Petra, pretending to be able to speak to the dead man in order to calm her somewhat traumatized younger sister's nerves. Well, neighborhood rumors circulate, and Petra gets the reputation of a medium. A girl appears on their doorstep begging to talk to her dead dog, adults appear with wads of money insisting to speak to lost loved ones, and ominously, Petra is warned by her dying mother to stay away from these dark games.

An intriguing mystical vibe runs through Glyph, and the plot begins and advances in modern day, while gradually flashing back to the sister's childhoods in 1996. But expect the nonlinear, for there are scenes that include the the flattened man (pre-flattening), a blind horse, Petra’s sister’s very entertaining adopted daughter, and other bits and pieces. This is a nontraditional narrative in many ways but the prose is extremely well constructed and full of word play. We drop into each new sequence smoothly because of its authenticity. The dynamic between the sisters keeps the reader most interested in this radically creative book with a lot going on.

Perhaps the invented a ghost to prepare for the passing of their own dying mother but no matter the reason, the author prunes the concept in wildly imaginative ways. This is a book to read and discuss, as you are left reflecting on the ideas presented well after the last page.

Highly recommended to fan of literary fiction. Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for a review copy.

[Alice Watkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literary fiction is very much alive. Ali Smith pumps it with fresh, ruby blood.

[alexa]

I almost shed a tear when I found out I received the ARC for this. SO. EXCITED.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

The sisters’ relationship is beautifully constructed, the way they navigate impending grief, and how that same bond is what ultimately drives them apart. One of my favourite Ali Smith novels.

[Madeline Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

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!

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Ghosts don't exist.
They don't. End of.
Story, however.
It is haunting.
Everything tells it.
A single detail tells it endlessly, powerful how it does, how story moves through all the modernity in its ancient green clothes and shows up everything that thinks itself new as transparent, shambling, same old; story’s as old as the hills itself and as brand new as everything that manages, against the odds, to grow fresh and new on those old hills.”

After the allegro comes the adagio.

If “Gliff” was the first movement of this symphony, all brisk, thriller-esque and dramatic, “Glyph” is the second movement, all introspective, musical and melancholy. After the first shock of the song, it’s time to pore over the lyrics.

If this text is played in a slightly different key, slower and more diffuse, its universe remains engrossing. Ali Smith does it again. She’ll have you eating straight out of her hand.

Sisters. Daughters. Mothers. Fathers. Adopted daughters. Ghosts. Imagined and real. Strangers. Past and present. Histories. Stories. Passed down from generation to generation, whispered, forgotten, rekindled and reshaped. From fact to fable to myth. War. Soldiers. Resistance fighters. Journalists. Horses. Horses. Horses.

All of Ali Smith’s legendary playfulness [listen to her speak one day if you get the chance, all jazzy and passionate, her voice in a mad race to try and keep up with her thoughts] and radical attunement to our present moment(s) are all at play here.

Glyphs. Stories. Symbols. Denominators. Carvings.
All here to decode and unflatten our world.
All here to give a voice to what we cannot speak.

Let the ghosts in.

[Wout · Rating 5 out of 5]

Een teder spookverhaal voor onze tijd

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this as an ARC and was unaware it was a sequel of sorts. That being said, it was a great read as a standalone novel. The prose was truly beautiful to read. The interactions between the sisters at different ages perfectly encapsulated what it is like to have a sibling; those late night conversations and the innate act of helping your sibling feel better or safe. I will be picking up Gliff next as I am not ready to for this to end yet.

[victoria marie]

ordered & en route!

[Rendezvouswithbooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although rooted in present world 2026, Glyph is a story of siblings- sisters Petra and Patricia. While grieving with the loss of their mother & battling an abusive father, they invent a game called Glyph - where they make up stories about communicating with ghosts
Estranged for many years, the sisters finally meet after the ghost of a blind horse from their childhood suddenly reappears in Petra's home one day
This book also shares many anecdotes about the horrors of war

Both the books Gliff and Glyph, explore sibling connection, loss of parent, use of horse as metaphor

I am not going to spoil it for you but the way in which Smith has hidden Gliff in the Glyph, she has played the ball out of the park
Reading the books in publication order shows how intelligently Smith has created this Möbius strip

Writing is extremely readable, laced with humor & characteristic Smith wordplays. I don't even remember the last time I laughed so much

Read it

[Emma Rund · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ali Smith, my girl! Yet another hit.

'Ghosts don't exist. They don't. End of. Story, however. It is haunting. Everything tells it."

Ali Smith is an author who loves to play with words. Maybe it trips you up a little now and then, but I read it as little bursts of poetry. There are so many double meanings in her work that I love to stumble upon.

Glyph, a follow up to her novel Gliff, tells the story of two sisters, Petra and Patch, as they imagine dead people (and a horse) back to life. I think Glyph might hold different meanings for every reader, but for me, Glyph is about learning from the past, being crippled by empathy for other people's pain and suffering while the rest of the world seems not to care, sight-or lack of it, horses, death, truth, and storytelling (both the good and bad kinds). I think I'd need to read this about four more times to parse through all the recurring motifs, but even on a first read this was deeply affecting, and I love every minute of it.

I'm buying a physical copy as soon as this comes out so I can annotate it to bits.

[Molsa Roja(s) · Rating 5 out of 5]

An outstanding piece of literature. Even though the main characters –a couple of siblings as in Gliff– are not as emotionally attiring as in the previous novel, Smith succeeds amazingly well regarding the emotional charge of the work itself.

- ...that soreness has been going round and round the world since, like a bird looking for somewhere to land, and it has landed on me. p.32

In Gliff we became close and worried about a couple of kids in a dystopian world, and the homonymous horse most certainly symbolized the possibility of hope & goodness even in the darkest times. In Glyph, not only do we encounter an interesting metaliterary exercise where they are usually exhausting and self-absorbed, but we are told two incredibly touching stories about war, and how war takes place not only between nations but also against truth –in this case, the murder of a journalist.

I have a tense relationship towards literature that Smith resolves. I can't avoid despising intensely the mass market, the flood of pseudoliterature, the same old stories retold over and over that harm so much literature as an art. And for that, I'm usually much more inclined towards style rather than content. Yet Smith's work is exactly what a philosopher like Haraway would enjoy and courage: it matters what stories we tell each other, who tells them, with what intent, since it is through stories that we live by. And so, regarding story-telling Smith is one of the best. The topic of this book, I may have forgotten to tell, is our relationship with the dead: in what ways do they exist, do they still leave, in the sense that they affect us? By whom or what are we haunted, and what does it imply? As Joyce said, at the end of The Dead:

- his soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent to their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

[Joe Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mean, it's not that we weren't used to seeing the dead.

A story about stories, containing stories within stories, about stories, referencing other stories.

Less of a linear narrative than Gliff but equally as compelling. Happy to admit that I didn't fully understand everything going on, but that's the joy of an Ali Smith novel. So much to unpack and so many playful choices of language that I'm sure would benefit from a reread (and re-reread).

The stories-within-stories nature of the book reminded me quite a bit of House of Day, House of Night. Both excellent reads that are political and deal with memory in an impressively nuanced way.

Shame this is only going to be a duology. I'd be very happy to read a Gliph/Gleipgh/Glith?

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up. Review to be posted closer to US publication date. Thought-provoking and funny with brilliant word-play. A solid "sequel" that blends politics and the personal and highlights the power of story-telling. I do love most of what Smith writes and had great fun reading this book - it will need multiple re-reads because so much is packed into a relatively short novel. More to come on the blog.

[Bram · Rating 5 out of 5]

Briljant zusterboek van Gliff.

[Darcy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ali Smith's gentle-fierce morality and love of wordplay always make her worth reading. Reflections on what a reader wants from a novel are playfully self-mocking. Smith's riffing on 'glyph' is fun but I must admit that her commentary about 'glyphosate' triggered me to write to our local council (again) re: their casual use of this herbicide in our waterways. I hope it goes not matter that I have read Glyph before taking on the earlier novel, Gliff. ;)

[Jack Bigglestone · Rating 4 out of 5]

The endlessly inventive Ali Smith returns with the sister story to 2024’s strikingly allegorical Gliff. This time she’s brining the political back home to the closely personal. We again meet two siblings helping each other through a difficult childhood - in the shadow of their quietly abusive father and the death of their mother they use their bright, powerful imaginations to tell each other a story that might help them survive. But when does a story take on a life of its own, like a ghost (sometimes a very literal and loud ghost) that won’t leave us alone?

Glyph, like its smart and charming characters, is brimful of questions like these. How does global politics intersect and interrupt our everyday lives? How do we as individuals find agency in a deeply troubled and troubling world. With competing and confusing stories all around us how do we find what is honest and true, and avoid getting stuck in someone else’s version of the narrative? Smith’s genius is in wrapping these often complex ideas into a heartfelt story about normal people, and inviting every reader to think about them with her.

Smith’s simply powerful writing never lets me down, with its joyful exploration of what words can do and where ideas can lead us. She continues to be a guiding light of courage in bleak times, always hopeful that good people paying attention to the world can make a difference.

[Stuart Piper · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this is a bit disappointing for an Ali Smith: sub par I felt.

[kasey · Rating 4 out of 5]

forgot how much i love ali smith. she never misses