Girl Meets Boy

by Ali Smith

Girl meets boy. It's a story as old as time. But what happens when an old story meets a brand new set of circumstances? Ali Smith's re-mix of Ovid's most joyful metamorphosis is a story about the kind of fluidity that can't be bottled and sold. It is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation, a story of puns and doubles, reversals and revelations. Funny and fresh, poetic and political, here is a tale of change for the modern world.

'Poetic . . . Smith remembers what the ancients knew: that musical words drum a beat through to understanding.' The Times

Genres: Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Mythology, Contemporary, Romance, Retellings

164 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2007

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

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Nobody grows up mythless…It’s what we do with the myths we grow up with that matters.’

Sometimes the right book finds you. Reading Ali Smith’s Girl meets boy felt like a book I was always meant to encounter, a book I, as a reader, had come together in all the ideal ways for this book to fully immerse itself in my heart and soul. ‘Some stories always need telling more than others,’ Smith writes, and for me this is certainly one of those. Using the story of Iphis and Ianthe as the heart of the story and spirit of it’s themes, Girl meets boy becomes a gorgeous meditation on fighting for freedom from the subjugation of social constructs and narratives built for the purpose of gatekeeping power, challenging the modern myth-making of corporate marketing and embracing a joyful fluidity of identity. This is a book that made me feel seen, understood, and empowered, and read like a celebration of the possibilities of life. With a balance of humor and fierce criticism told through blissfully beautiful prose and a narrative that rotates between the perspectives of two sisters, Anthea and Imogen Gunn, Ali Smith combines the modern myths while honoring those of the past in a raucous and rebellions little novella that has completely stolen my heart.

‘I was a she was a he was a we were a girl and a girl and a boy and a boy, we were blades, were a knife that could cut through myth.’

At its core, Girl meets boy is a love story. One with searing prose on the way love can enrapture and awake you that reminds me of my personal favorite, Jeanette Winterson, with queer love befitting lines such as ‘I had not known, before us, that every vein in my body was capable of carrying light.’ It is a story of Anthea meeting Robin—‘she was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen’—but also a love story to the myths we make, to protest, to freedom, to queer possibilities, to ‘the whole world, beautiful, various, waiting.’ This is a story about being free from the shackles of gender binaries (something that I really appreciate as an enby) to love that makes you realize you are ‘both genders, a whole new gender, no gender at all.’ And most importantly, the safety to embrace yourself this way. Goddamn, I can relate. I read most of this book with chills going through my entire being. I was grinning and cheering. This is a love story to love and I, in turn, love it with all my heart.

‘You’re going to have to learn the kind of hope that makes things history.’

Smith draws on the Roman myth of Iphis and Ianthe, such as it is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In Smith’s book, Robin respects Ovid for being ‘very fluid, as writers go…he knows, more than most, that the imagination doesn’t have a gender.’ We find here that Girl meets boy is another tale in the spirit of Ovid who ‘honours all sorts of love…all sorts of story.’ You will be fine if you are unfamiliar with the myth as Smith explains it for you. Twice, actually. Once directly and then again in an adorable dialogue between Robin and Anthea as Robin explains the myth as the reason behind her artist name being Iphis (you’ll likely note the name Anthea is rather adjacent to Ianthe). Though the myth is layered in with Anthea’s grandfather’s stories, the novel opening with him saying ‘let me tell you about when I was a girl.’

‘You’re going to have to learn the kind of hope that makes things history.’

The use of names is rather blunt, yet effective. ‘You’re a walking peace protest,’ Robin tells Anthea who’s first name meaning flowers and her family name, Gunn, carries the clan motto Either Peace or War, ‘You’re the flower in the Gunn.’ This recalls two famous photos, The Ultimate Confrontation as well as the Pulitzer Prize-nominated photo Flower Power, the former taken by Marc Riboud of high school student Jan Rose Kasmir confronting a bayoneted gun with a chrysanthemum, the latter by photographer Bernie Boston of protester George Harris putting carnations in soldier’s loaded rifles aimed at unarmed civilians. Both were taken during the 1967 March on the Pentagon as a protest of the Vietnam War:

The Ultimate Confrontation

Flower Power

The spirit of resistance and public displays of protest is alive and well in Smith’s tale, beginning with the grandfather telling of the time she was accomplices with a woman’s suffragette named Burning Lily who protested by burning down factories (in the notes section, Smith says she was based on suffragette Lilian Lenton) and moving to Robin spray painting messages around the city. Such as outside Imogen and Anthea’s job at Pure, a bottled water company with aims not just for global distribution of overpriced water but becoming a corporation so large and octopus-like to have a hand in many industries.

‘You really think you’ll make a single bit of difference to all the unfair things and all the suffering and all the injustice and all the hardship with a few words?
Yes, she say.’

The peaceful protests of graffiti highlighting inequalities like gender pay gaps, femicides, or the ethical issues of reducing access to natural resources in order to profit from them are not always welcomed, and not just by the police. Average citizens fear their public art protests are too divisive or will drive tourists away. I loved this section, as my own public art displays (I left painting around town with favorite poems written on them) were shut down for “graffiti violations” and am a huge fan of public art. But here this is used as a way to interrogate ideas of who is allowed to direct the ‘dominant narrative’ of social discourse, and the ways those with money and power gatekeep modern myth-making.

‘[D]o myths spring fully formed from the imagination and the needs of a society, I sad, as if they emerged from society’s subconscious? Or are myths conscious creations by the various money-making forces? For instance, is advertising a new kind of myth-making?’

I’ve always referred to marketing as ‘corporate fanfiction’ at best, it’s actually one of my degrees though I like to say I have a degree in propaganda. For my final course when asked what our biggest lesson about marketing is, I wrote that my biggest lesson is we shouldn’t manipulate public psychology for profit and instead dismantle corporate marketing (they then got to hand me a degree with highest honors for a 4.0 GPA). Understanding is not the same as condoning, and I do value knowing how it all works. But, needless to say, Ali Smith dunking on marketing was absolutely delightful to me.

Smith doesn’t pull any punches here, with the ‘Creative’ team meetings feeling rather cultish and the psychological manipulation and corporate myth-making being on full display. Anthea can’t buy into it, but Imogen does. We see Pure and corporate marketing as the antithesis to the messaging done by Robin, a battle to control the ‘persuasive myth’ either to set people free or to profit by subjugating them. Corporate buzzwords and capitalist messaging construct myths that elevate CEOs as the heroes of their own myths with skyscraper offices as the new Mt. Olympus from where they can frame the stories of the world and distort the public narratives to always be the freedom fighters even when curbing freedoms. ‘DDR…Deny Disparage Rephrase’ the Pure boss teaches. ‘Use the word terrorism,’ he instructs employees about speaking to the press about water protectors in India protesting that the dam built by Pure has killed their crops and polluted the only water access they have left. He says access to clean water is not a Right, but a Need, one they should exploit because they need money. ‘It’s international-government-ratified…Whether you think it’s bullshit or not. And I can do what I like.’ It would seem like cartoonish villany if this very thing wasn’t constantly so out in the open with people defending them all the time. As the graffiti in the book always says: ‘THIS MUST CHANGE.’

‘It’s easy to think it’s a mistake, or you’re a mistake. It’s easy, when everything and everyone you know tells you you’re the wrong shape, to believe you’re the wrong shape.’

Similarly, Smith addresses the narratives around gender and sexuality, such as how the natural love of Robin and Anthea is met with pushback. ‘My sister would be banned in schools if she was a book,’ Imogen thinks, a sentence that was rather alarming/amusing to read while in Florida, the state with the second most book bans in the US, usually over LGTBQ+ representation. The first section from Imogen’s perspective could be rather triggering—heads up—as it deals with her being shocked by Anthea coming out, though knowing Smith’s perspective on this you can see how she filters this with some humor like Imogen noting that Anthea had always liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Tracy Champman a lot which had to be foreshadowing. It does touch on how much gatekeeping and pushback there is over queer identities, usually most loudly by those outside of them without any experience in them insisting on controlling the narrative about them (like resistance to trans/nonbinary identities). This is reflected in the book with Imogen struggling to find the ‘correct’ way to term Robin and Anthea, only for Robin to effectively sidestep the whole thing. ‘The proper word for me, Robin Goodman says, is me.’

‘Now I had taken a whole new shape. No, I had taken the shape I was always supposed to, the shape that let me hold my head high. Me, Anthea Gunn, head turned towards the sun.’

I love Girl meets boy so much and it was the perfect book to read while on vacation. It does all lead to an uplifting ending, and while I am not usually one for overtly upbeat endings, this one earns it and we all deserve this ending. Especially after years of “kill your queers” or only focusing on suffering being a standard whenever there was queer representation in literature. This book is beautiful. It may be a touch heavy handed, but so are myths and Smith does an excellent job of recasting Ovid’s tale in a modern setting as a complementary story to the original. Perhaps my rating is a little inflated, perhaps I also don’t care, this book just made me very happy on a warm vacation and I’m fine with that. Its so many thing I enjoy thinking about all in one story. I shamefully had not read Ali Smith until now but this will certainly not be my last. Girl meets boy is an investigation into the power and necessity of stories, and a lovely story all to itself.

4.5/5

‘It was always the stories that needed the telling that gave us rope we could cross any river with. They balanced us high above any crevasse. They made us be natural acrobats. They made us be brave. They met us well. They changed us. It was in their nature to.’

[Kelly (and the Book Boar) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

“Girl meets boy, I said. In so many more ways than one.”

While I’m admittedly someone who is not afraid to share my opinion, I am also not a person who actively seeks out things to rage about. Especially on a social media site. Yes, there are injustices in the world and yes sometimes a book makes me think about political/religious/whatever controversial topics, but my goal on this site is to discuss those things as little as possible. It’s my opinion there are better outlets for that to be done than with a couple hundred acquaintances, but 30,000,000 strangers potentially looking on as well. That being said, if you’ll allow me a minute . . . .



Girl Meets Boy is a book I never would have read were it not for the Winter Reading Challenge. I was looking for retellings of classics and thought what could possibly be more “classic” than a retelling of something written in EIGHT A.D.?

(In case you aren’t familiar with the original, the Cliff’s Notes version is that it is the story is of a poor family who cannot afford to have a female and therefore will kill their child upon birth should it be a girl. An intervention by the goddess Isis convinces the mother to sort of “go with the flow” and raise the female baby as a boy named Iphis. The deceit continues through adolescence and is only feared to be discovered upon the marriage of Iphis to Ianthe. But with the help of divine intervention once again, Iphis is turned into a man and he and Ianthe live happily ever after.)

The modern version is potentially one of the most important little books I’ve ever come across. Be forewarned, the writing style is something that may turn many off – it’s simple, abrupt, doesn’t use quotation marks, etc. The message, however. Whew! I’ll allow the book to speak for itself a moment:

“It’s easy to think it’s a mistake, or you’re a mistake. It��s easy, when everything and everyone you know tells you you’re the wrong shape, to believe you’re the wrong shape.”

And while you may think this story is that of love . . . .

“She had the swagger of a girl. She blushed like a boy. She had a girl’s toughness. She had a boy’s gentleness. She was meaty as a girl. She was graceful as a boy. She was as brave and handsome and tough as a girl. She was as pretty and delicate and dainty as a boy. She turned boys’ heads like a girl. She turned girls’ heads like a boy. She made love like a boy. She made love like a girl. She was so boyish it was girlish, so girlish it was boyish., she made me want to rove the world writing our names on every tree. I had simply never found anyone so right.”

It morphs into a powerful message about the state of the population filled with sheeple and of idiotic consumerism and how selling basic needs (in this case water) has become a despicable “human right” – the right to make the almighty dollar and tough shit for anyone who can’t afford it. It’s also a story of REAL feminism. Not the whinybaby crap generally seen when people use social media as their platform but the scary real shit that goes on in the world every day. Like female infanticide and the fact that women STILL get paid 30%-40% less than a man for the same damn job and that only 2% of senior management positions are held by women and that over 90 countries in the world don’t even have a woman in a ministerial position.

“THIS MUST CHANGE.”



This book was read as part of the library Winter Reading Challenge. Only TWO more books and the coffee mug will be MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE!

[Adam Dalva · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited at the beginning of this book - particularly since I'm going to Inverness next week! - but found it to be a bit of an odd mixture of on-the-nose plot (it's a classic feel good story in many ways, with a horrid sexist villain who is overcome and everything) and experimental, stream-of-consciousness writing. When it is good, it is very good:

"Because of us, things came together. Everything was possible.
I had not known, before us, that every vein in my body was capable of carrying light, like a river seen from a train makes a channel of sky etch itself deep into a landscape. I had not really known I could be so much more than myself. I had not known another body could do this to me."

I am excited to read more Ali Smith, for more passages like this one, but the ratio was off here, and it slowed me down. When characters in the book are commenting on how shocked they are with how well everything is going at the ending, it is a sign that things have gone too well.

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is not my favorite ali smith, but its charming, and it is better than the other books in this series look. does that make sense? i loved elements of this novella, but some of it seemed a bit pat. her writing is still gorgeous though.

[Kalliope · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came to this book through the group reading on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, RC , referred to us this ‘Ovidian’ take by Ali Smith. I had already read one of Smith’s novels How to Be Both, which partly dwells on the Ferrarese painter Francesco del Cossa. In a way the title of that one could also fit for this other novel. Clearly Smith is interested in dualities -- whether characters, sex etc. Seven years separate the two novels; Girl Meets Boy is the earlier one and was published in 2004.

This was an enjoyable read on the whole but my interest ebbed and flowed. The sections with a political tone came too close to a pamphlet (*) and the vindication of lesbianism seemed almost puerile. But other parts, in particular some passages in beautiful writing and my curiosity about what she would do with the Ovid theme, kept me going.

The novel feeds on one of the stories in Book IX of Ovid’s work – that of Iphis and Ianthe. It run as follows:

In Crete the human couple of Ligdus and Telethusa are expecting a child. The father tells the wife that as girls are too much trouble if instead of a boy they get a girl, she will be killed. One night the mother has a dream and the goddess Io, surrounded by a whole array of Egyptian deities, appears to her and tells her not to be afraid about the sex of her child: whether it is a boy or a girl she, Io, will protect her. When Telethusa gave birth to a girl the mother proceeded to pretend her daughter was a boy and dressed her and rose her as such. He/She was called Iphis, after the grandfather. When Iphis turned thirteen she/he was arranged in marriage to the beautiful girl Ianthe. They had been educated together and loved each other.

Iphis felt a great deal of trouble; she/he was in love with her girl-friend but she thought that girls cannot love girls. She thought it was unnatural. She could not think of any other species in which there had been pairing between two females – across species yet, but not between the same sex. She even thought of invoking the ingenious Daeadalus and see whether he could find a solution. But to no avail.

When the wedding came Telethusa in despair visited the temple of the Egyptian goddess Isis (she is identified as Io -- there is a Temple dedicated to Isis in Pompeii) and received some signal signs.

Back at the wedding, as it proceeds, Iphis is gradually transformed into a male youth. And everyone is happy.

Smith includes a summary of the classical story in her novel. But there is another passage that I highly enjoyed and that to me seemed better related to Ovid’s story than the main plot of a Girl Meeting a Boy. It is the description she makes of the statue to the women who fought in the war, and which stands at the top of this review. The Memorial to the Women of WWII, which stands next to Whitehall, consists of a series of uniforms which hang around a wall. These were the uniforms of the professions that women had to don when they undertook the jobs of men while these went to the front.

The plot in the novel evolves around the love between two young women who relish in their homosexual love. The Iphis story is very different. The metamorphosis of Iphis ensues precisely because she thinks that ‘nature alone is against me’. The woman becomes a man and her problem is solved. And her life saved..

And this is what happened when these women during WWII became or metamorphosed into men. They solved the problem. The civil society went on working.

How to Be Both then.


********

There is another take of the Iphis and Ianthe – a 17thCentury play by the French Isaac De Benserade, which I may read: Iphis et Iante.


********

(+)

In the novel it is stated that 'sexual and domestic violence affects one out of every three women and girls worldwide and that this is the world's leading cause of injury and death for women'.

If she means death from injury - may be. Otherwise this is not the case. From 2014, but still illustrating.

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/h...

[Helene Jeppesen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though this book is really tiny (it's 161 pages), it still has a strong story and a clear message. It deals with the two genders and how they both mix up and are basically the same. It doesn't matter whether you're a boy and a girl or whether you fall in love with a boy or a girl, and Ali Smith does a beautiful job at describing this transparancy between the two sexes.
Once again, Ali Smith has surprised me with her poignant writing style. She definitely has a rare talent for telling a story, and I'm very intrigued to get to know even more of her books.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another day, another terrific novel from Ali Smith. I have resolved to gobble up her canon in the most heroic time possible, like an overweight man backing a lorryload of curries and waffles into his ecstatic gob. In Glasgow we have a meal called the Everything & More, which is enough food for an entire Ethiopian village in a bucket. Battered.

This delightful story frames the myth of Iphis (woman disguises her daughter as a man, daughter turns into a man later on) within a tale of sexual identity and social injustice in contemporary Inverness. Flicking between sisters Imogen and Anthea, Imogen is a young go-getting business type working for Pure Water while Anthea is her younger sister who falls in love with the mannish girl Robin.

In no time at all, Anthea is spray-painting Inverness with radical slogans and Imogen is learning about the darker side of global commerce (as if there’s a light side). Imogen’s sections use internal monologue and more parentheses than is healthy in one novel, while Anthea’s sections are in more straightforward first-person. This is certainly a lighter work from Smith, despite the polemic at the heart of the text, but it’s still better than you, me, them and us.

[Katie.dorny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a beautiful lgbtqia+ retelling of the Ovid in the modern era and I adored it.

The love story was beautiful, the prose, the character development..all together it kept a huge smile on my face the entire time.

The open nature of gender and it’s fluidity and how the narrative relating to sexuality and identity was directed to the reader was so intimate it drew you in and made the story much more powerful.

[BrokenTune · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The river laughed. I swear it did. It laughed and it changed as I watched. As it changed, it stayed the same. The river was all about time, it was about how little time actually mattered. I looked at my watch. Fuck. I was an hour and a half late. Ha ha! The river laughed at me again."

Girl Meets Boy is part of the Myths series published by Canongate where authors re-tell exisitng myths and stories. Other authors in this series include Margaret Atwood, Karen Armstrong, AS Byatt, David Grossman, Milton Hatoum, Natsuo Kirino, Alexander McCall Smith, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Victor Pelevin, Su Tong, Dubravka Ugresic, Salley Vickers and Jeanette Winterson. It looks like an interesting project.

Girl Meets Boy is Smith's retelling of Ovid's story of Iphis and Ianthe, which deals with the idea gender fluidity or transformation within the context of heteronormativity. What Smith does, however, is to tell the story, or rather a story playing with similar ideas, in the context of two sisters, Anthea and Imogen ("Midge"), based in one of my favourite places - Inverness.



Anthea is a free-spirited idealist who dislikes her job in the local PR firm her sister got her. Imogen is a straight-laced pragmatist who is pursuing her ambitions in the same firm, which currently tries to market over-priced bottled water. The story really kicks off when a protester by the artistic alias of Iphis07 vandalises the PR firm's property:

"It was a beautiful day.
The boy up the ladder at the gate was in a kilt and sporran. The kilt was a bright red tartan; the boy was black-waistcoated and had frilly cuffs, I could see the frills at his wrists as I came closer. I could see the glint of the knife in his sock. I could see the glint of the little diamond spangles on the waistcoat and the glint that came off the chain that held the sporran on. He had long dark hair winged with ringlets, like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, but cleaner. He was spray-painting, in beautiful red calligraphy, right under the Pure insignia, these words:
DON’T BE STUPID. WATER IS A HUMAN RIGHT. SELLING IT IN ANY WAY IS MORALLY WRO..."

I know, I know, it all sounds a bit insipid so far, but it isn't just a story of one sister conforming to what (she thinks) is expected of her and one defying "the man" - Girl Meets Boy, like all stories in Ovid's Metamorphoses, is a story of transformation.

So, when Anthea falls in love with Robin (the protester), it encourages Anthea to figure out what she wants from life but it also opens up Midge to examine her own ideas about ... well, everything, really, and it is in the telling of how both sisters go through this change that Smith really shines. I particularly love the humor .....

"Like double oh seven. Daniel Craig in Casino Royal, rising out of the water like that goddess on a shell, I said. Lo and behold.
Ursula Andress did it first, she said. I mean, after Venus herself, that is. In fact, Daniel Craig and Ursula Andress look remarkably alike, when you compare them."

and the curiosity....

"Then I wondered why on earth would anyone ever stand in the world as if standing in the cornucopic middle of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon but inside a tiny white-painted rectangle about the size of a single space in a car park, refusing to come out of it, and all round her or him the whole world, beautiful, various, waiting?"

and the warmth...

"I get up. I call the police station. The man on the desk is unbelievably informal.

Oh aye, he says. Now, is it one of the message girls or boys or whatever, or one of the seven dwarves that you’re after? Which one would you like? We’ve got Dopey, Sneezy, Grumpy, Bashful, Sleepy, Eye-fist, and another one whose name I’d have to look up for you.

I’d like to talk to my sister, Anthea Gunn, please, I say. And that’s enough flippancy about their tag from you.

About their what, now? he says.

Years from now, I say, you and the Inverness Constabulary will be nothing but a list of dry dusty names locked in an old computer memory stick. But the message girls, the message boys. They’ll be legend.

Uh huh, he says. Well, if you’d like to hang up your phone now, Ms Gunn, I’ll have your wee sister call you back in a jiffy.

(I consider making a formal complaint, while I wait for the phone to go. I am the only person permitted to make fun of my sister.)"


All of which I associate with Inverness anyway and which is somewhat represented by the concerns of locals over Flora MacDonald braving the weather in front of the court house with a bare neck.



(Yeah, yeah, I know it was a stunt for Caley Thistle winning the league, but check out some of the comments on here. )

[Barry Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

If this was written by Jodi Picoult or Danielle Steel is would be branded as an "unconventional love story". Thankfully it's written by Ali Smith who has enough brains in her head to write a love story which happens to be unconventional.

[Juan Naranjo]

Imogen y Anthea son dos hermanas escocesas al borde de un ataque de nervios. Sin familia, ni estabilidad, ni planes de futuro, se enfrentan a la veintena como pueden. Aunque son irreconciliablemente opuestas, deciden intentar ayudarse la una a la otra a poner sus vidas en orden. Pero Imogen está demasiado obsesionada con su cuerpo y su carrera, mientras que Anthea no sabe qué quiere en la vida y se dedica, básicamente, a dar bandazos y a cagarla.

Qué novelita corta tan fresca, original y sorprendente. Me ha parecido rabiosamente contemporánea en su forma, lo que resulta llamativo teniendo en cuenta que es, de alguna forma, una reinterpretación de un mito de Ovidio. «Chica conoce a chico» transita entre la crítica social y la historia familiar, entre la novela romántica y el experimento literario. Smith ha conseguido crear a dos personajes reconocibles, reales e identificables que nos hablan sobre la esclavitud del trabajo en un mundo neoliberal, sobre el amor encontrado de la manera más imprevisible y, también, como tema de fondo que no puede ser más oportuno, sobre la importancia de las políticas relativas al agua en un mundo que se seca.

[foteini_dl · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ακούστε,λοιπόν,να σας πω για τότε που ήμουν κορίτσι,είπε ο παππούς μας."
Η Smith ξέρει να ξεκινάει δυναμικά,αν όχι και ιντριγκαδόρικα.Αυτή η πρώτη πρόταση δίνει το στίγμα του βιβλίου.Καταφεύγοντας στο αρχαιοελληνικό μύθο της Ίφις και της Ιάνθης,ο οποίος αποτελεί και τμήμα των Μεταμορφώσεων του Οβίδιου.Σύμφωνα με την μυθολογία,η Ίφις ήταν ερωτευμένη με την Ιάνθη και λίγο πριν παντρευτούν, η θεά Ίσιδα μεταμόρφωσε την πρώτη σε άντρα.
Μου έκανε ιδιαίτερη εντύπωση η μαεστρία με την οποία η συγγραφέας ενέταξε τόσο όμορφα τη μυθολογία στο κείμενό της.Και αν η πρώτη πρόταση με έκανε να πω «ωχ»,πιστεύοντας ότι τα πράγματα θα μπερδευτούν,ευτυχώς μέσα στις επόμενες σελίδες έγιναν όλα ξεκάθαρα.Αυτό το βιβλίο μιλάει πρώτα απ’όλα για την αγάπη με τόση ζεστασιά.Από εκεί και πέρα,θέτει έντονα το θέμα της ταυτότητας φύλου,της σεξουαλικής ταυτότητας και της ανισότιμης μεταχείρισης των γυναικών,ασκώντας κριτική στο υπάρχον κοινωνικο-οικονομικό σύστημα .
Η γραφή της Smith ρέει,σε σημεία η αφήγηση οδηγεί ακόμα και σε cliffhanger,ενώ η μετάφραση στα ελληνικά είναι πολύ καλή.Ένα καλύτερο εξώφυλλο να είχε η έκδοση και θα μίλαγα για μια άρτια δουλειά.
"η ιστορία της ίδιας της φύσης,της πολυμήχανης,που δημιουργεί το ένα πράγμα μέσα από το άλλο και το ένα πράγμα μέσα στο άλλο,και τίποτα δεν διαρκεί,και τίποτα δεν χάνεται,και τίποτα δεν εξαφανίζεται,και τα πράγματα μπορούν πάντα να αλλάζουν,και τα πράγματα θα είναι πάντα διαφορετικά,επειδή τα πράγματα μπορούν να είναι πάντα διαφορετικά."

[Enrique · Rating 2 out of 5]

Este libro no era para mí, desde luego. Bajo la apariencia de novela va mutando en una especie de cuento utopico inspirado en el mito de Ifis de Ovidio, en la Metamorfosis (no he llegado yo solo a esta conclusión, se explica en una nota final de la traductora). Demasiado pretencioso...

Empezó bien, con el desarrollo empezaron mis dudas, y cuando quedaban 40 páginas casi lo abandono.

No entraré mucho como suele ser mi costumbre cuando no me gusta un libro, solo algún apunte: en apenas 150 páginas (en una edición más cicatera hubieran sido 80 páginas a lo sumo) y en un espacio temporal de la obra de apenas unos días, creo que no puede tener cabida:1) aclarar la identidad sexual de una de la protagonista, 2) al tiempo que su situación laboral, 3) además de tomar su vida un derrotero utópico, 4) la hermana tres cuartos de lo mismo, 5) deja el trabajo, 6) encuentra pareja, 7) toman una posición ante la vida 8) ante la naturaleza y el entorno 9)ante la situación de la mujer.....que agobio. Los diálogos increíbles, no de alucinantes, de no-creíbles.

Como decía al comienzo, la autora busca un formato un tanto etéreo y un poco alejado del estándar de la novela, pero tanta melaza y todos y todas tan buenos me acabó por aburrir.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

She was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen in my life

I confess, I ran kicking and screaming from Smith’s Autumn after reading no more than the first 5 or so pages – this was my second attempt at her, to try to understand what everyone else finds so substantial and rewarding. After all, I love Ovid; I love classical receptions; I’m interested in books about gender – and textual – fluidity – I should love this, right? Wrong. I think I’m going to have to admit that Smith is just, as they say, Not For Me.

I love some of her lines (the opening ‘Let me tell you about when I was a girl’, our grandfather says’) but almost immediately, halfway down the same page, Smith can’t resist the heavy-handed symbolism of grandfather’s work in a circus: headstands, tightrope walking and juggling are just so in your face about inversions, negotiations and ‘juggling’ between gendered identities. The wordplay, too, which has charmed others falls flat for me: from Scylla and Charybdis, to Cilla [Black] and Charybdis left me groaning rather than chuckling.

The political points are laid on and while I agree with them 100%, they feel unsubtle and a bit shouty; there’s also a sense of datedness about the whole thing. I did, though, enjoy the scene where Dominic and Norman, having dissed gays, both male and female, in clichéd terms then ‘are somehow roaring with laughter again - they have their arms around each other’: it may not be new, but the homoerotics of male friendship are used with both ironic force and humour here.

Finally, I should say that Ovid’s myth of Iphis may be ‘joyous’ as Smith describes it, but it’s also a story which reinscribes ideologies of gender and sexual difference: Iphis in Ovid isn’t what we would term a lesbian, she’s a girl who is so far from being able to imagine girls loving girls that her body is biologically transformed into a man’s. Smith updates this as we would expect – but for all her energy this was less fizz, more fizzling out for me.

[Tanuj Solanki · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like Smith's reworking of the Iphis myth better than Chaudhuri's attempts with the Odysseus story. Smith gives us movement, energy, chutzpah, and shows that the retelling of a myth in the modern context does not necessarily have to emphasize the mundane and the mundane only. Not everyone has to be plotless like Joyce. And, on plot or on syntactical innovation or on something else, Smith knows that it is important to get a tick in the 'radical' column, like Joyce knew very well. It's something that Chaudhuri doesn't consider important.

[Manuel Alberto Vieira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ainda um estudo preparatório do que viria depois, mas já com todos os predicados que distinguem Ali Smith.

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I now understand the Ali Smith hype. Girl Meets Boy is a play on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, exploring gender fluidity and queerness. It is the love story of girl and boy, girl and girl. It is the love story between two contrasting sisters. It is the love story of one's inner self and the importance of exploring your identity beyond the confines of the norm and the societal structure hammered into you from childhood. True to Smith's fashion, she plays with the conventions of language and structure to portray the modern world for what it is; and what this means for the people within it questioning their self.

We begin in Scotland with Imogen and Anthea who are in the care of their grandparents. The stark contrast between the two is evident from the get-go: Imogen is uptight and every parent's dream. Anthea is the dreamer who some would consider troublesome. This is a clear indication of the fact that she struggles to be what one would consider 'normal'. Smith shifts the narrative forward to their present day in 2007. The sisters now live together in their Grandparents' home, the contrast widening the gap between the two. Where Imogen is desperate to fit in at their shared workplace, Anthea dreams the days away, until she meets the gender-queer eco-protestor Robin. For Anthea, who has never understood 'normal', this is love at first sight. For Imogen, this brings blame on their separated parents and the Spice Girls for their sexiness as she revisits her schoolgirl past whereby homophobia was the norm and she perpetuated it to conform. The key, from here on out, is soul-searching for both sisters as they battle with what they believe in and what love is to them - their love of themselves, their love for each other, and the love they can give romantically to their person.

It is quite simply incredible. Smith's politics are clear, and her intelligence and wit are sharp. ‘It’s what we do with the myths we grow up with that matters‘ indeed.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let it be known: I enjoyed an Ali Smith book. That's something I never thought I'd hear myself say, as I tried to read The Accidental a few years ago, and just couldn't get on board with the prose style. I've never been a fan of stream-of-consciousness so that was to be expected, but with Girl Meets Boy I ended up devouring it in two sittings.

I won't go into the synopsis too much: it follows two sisters, Andrea and Imogen. Andrea finds herself falling in love with a girl, Robin, whereas Imogen struggles to come to terms with this and her own low self-esteem. This book is a re-telling of Ovid's myth of Iphis, and I liked that the book directly referenced this - both in a traditional storytelling form, and in a modern language reinterpretation. And in the same chapter too!

I loved the contrast between Andrea and Imogen's narratives, and particularly enjoyed Imogen's. Her sentences are for the most part encased in opening and closing brackets, which made her thoughts feel that much more conflicting and colliding. I felt like I was genuinely in someone's head. With Andrea's sections, the prose style is a lot more long-winded, poetic, and flowing. It took me a little bit of extra concentration to get into this style, but eventually I got the hang of the language flow and enjoyed it for what it was.

If you are nervous about picking up an Ali Smith book due to her often experiemental style of writing, I'd recommend this. It's actually made me want to maybe try The Accidental again, although I'll probably try and seek out her play The Seer first as it's come highly recommended.

[Rita · Rating 4 out of 5]

«O que eu quero dizer é: estávamos na margem do rio sob as árvores, nós as duas, e prometemos ao nada que ali estava, ao nada de que éramos feitas, ao nada que estava a ouvir, que almejávamos ir para lá de nós mesmas.
E é essa a mensagem. Nem mais, nem menos.»

Tive momentos em que achei que este Rapariga Encontra Rapaz não me ia convencer. Falhei. E ainda bem. Ali Smith, mais uma vez, supreendeu-me. Levou-me com tamanha simplicidade, num enredo natural do que faz a vida das pessoas, que a grandiosidade que por vezes está por detrás dessas coisas simples que fazemos todos os dias, caiu como pedra no charco. E ainda bem.

[diario_de_um_leitor_pjv · Rating 5 out of 5]

COMENTÁRIO
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Rapariga encontra Rapaz"
Ali Smith
Tradução de Manuel Alberto Vieira

Revisitar, reescrever um mito clássico é muitas vezes um exercício literário encantador.

Ali Smith apresenta-nos o mito de Ifis, - revisita simbolicamente Ovídio -, a partir da beleza poética da relação fraterna de duas irmãs, e da paixão de ambas pela figura androgena de uma antiga colega de escola. Tudo istp num retrato territorial nascido numa pequena localidade das montanhas da Escócia.

Uma história de descoberta da identidade e da sexualidade. Uma história da vivência é da aprendizagem da identidade e de transgressão sexual e de género.
Mas também uma obra dura sobre a necessidade de repensarmos as práticas quotidianas e os activismos de resistência e transformação. Uma obra sobre o mundo em que vivemos

Uma obra que nos questiona em casda página.
Um texto intensamente poético que me encantou como leitor.
Quero, por isso, continuar a ler a maravilhosa prosa de Ali Smith, que foi um auspicioso início da minha participação na iniciativa #transmito, promovida pelo @2bejay.

(li de 08/01/2023 a 12/01/2023)

[Mery ✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5/5

"Let me tell you about when I was a girl, our grandfather says."

I was so excited to read this book because I had it in my TBR for so long but I feel like I must have missed something with this book. Don't get me wrong - this is a beautifully written book. There were quotes in this book that I've highlighted; there are pages that I've folded at the corners so I can find them again when I want to read a wonderful line. But that's all they are, and that's perhaps why they stood out so starkly; they're just beautiful lines in an otherwise rather empty narrative.

Girl Meets Boy uses the myth of Iphis, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, as a point of departure to tell a story about homophobia and sexism, female sexuality, and love. In the original myth, Iphis (daughter of Ligdus) is a girl who is raised as a boy because her father threatened her pregnant mother to kill the baby if it was female. Years later, the supposedly male Iphis falls in love with Ianthe, and they become engaged. The day before the wedding, worried that as a female she will never be able to satisfy her wife, Iphis prays to the gods for a miracle. And just in time for her wedding night, she is turned into a man, and s/he and Ianthe live happily ever after.

This is not what happens in Girl meets Boy. The story is not so much a retelling of the myth as a whole new story that explores the myth’s themes in a different light. The book is divided into sections: in the first, Anthea tries and fails to fit into the life her older sister is hoping she’ll fit into. In the second section, Imogen, Anthea sister, tries to deal with her fact that her sister is gay:
(My sister would be banned in schools if she was a book.)
(No, because the parliament lifted that legislation, didn’t it?)
(Did it?)
(I can’t remember. I can’t remember either way. I didn’t ever think that particular law was anything I’d ever have to remember or consider.)

Both narrative voices sounded exactly the same, with the only discernible difference being that Midge tended to think in almost staccato parentheses whereas Anthea's thoughts were more fluid. Both characters seemed to be almost interchangeable. An enjoyable archetype, yes, but an archetype nonetheless. I also thought that the plot was poorly paced and jumped from one narrative event to the next with little to no context, meaning that the actual significance or indeed relevance of certain plot points was totally lost. I think that Smith could have done with an extra 50 or so pages to flesh things out a bit more.

"She was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen in my life"

I didn't hate the book. I want to make that clear. I'll certainly re-read it in the future. I just wish that there was more to it behind the lovely prose and the deft wordplay, because on first reading, it seemed like a rather hollow narrative.

"We were blades, were a knife that could cut through myth, were two knives thrown by a magician, were arrows fired by a god, we hit heart, we hit home."

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is there a phrase for when you're falling for an author? Like, maybe, an "author crush" or something? Ms. Smith and I had our first date a year or so ago with How To Be Both and I got that whole giddy I-think-I've-met-the-one (as in "the one" to add to all the other ones whose every book I think I must read). But I don't like to rush into things (and you can only fit so many "ones" into your life at the same time), so it hasn't been 'til now that I got to a second read of hers. She has the kind of humorous, contemporary dialogue that I enjoy from George Saunders powered by wonderfully lyrical and literary underpinnings. Girl Meets Boy is a modern retelling of the myth of Iphis (book IX of Ovid's Metamorphoses, which you can quickly read first if you like since it's only a few pages, but Smith weaves in a close-to-the-original retelling of it within this book, so it's not really necessary). Somehow this manages to be historical, modern, silly, and quite serious romance. So, yes, I have found the "one" (or, you know, another "one")!

Apparently, Canongate has a whole myths series where modern authors are invited to re-invent myths. If Smith's book is indicative of the series at all, it's probably worth checking out.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW WORD I LEARNED FROM THIS BOOK:
stravaiging
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Late edit to the review: Some of the statistics in this book are from an important nonprofit:
Womankind

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Let me tell you about when I was a girl, our grandfather says."

So begins Ali Smith's contribution to the Canongate Myth series. I knew from that first sentence that I was going to enjoy this! And it was great fun to read, as is everything I have read by Ali Smith (which is nearly all of her novels, but hardly any of her short stories). I only wish it had been longer. I read it on my Kindle and the few times I glanced at the bottom of the screen, the percentage read seemed to have gone up very quickly (no page numbers in this edition).

It has everything that I love Ali Smith for. It has delightful word play. It has experimental structure (one section is largely sentences in parentheses). It has humour. It has culture.

I have to admit (I think I've admitted this before) that Ali Smith gets special treatment from me when it comes to reviews. Most books start off as 3 stars and go up or down depending on how I feel about them. It seems only reasonable to assume a book is going to be OK and then wait for it to persuade you otherwise in one direction or another. But Ali Smith, in my head, starts with 5 stars and has to work quite hard to lose one. I'm knocking one star off in this case because the book does feel at times like it has been written because someone else asked for it (which is exactly the case!) and hurried out to a deadline.

However, even at "just" 4 stars, it is still the case that Ali Smith has yet to disappoint me.

[Els Book Hunters · Rating 4 out of 5]

No sembla una gran idea embolicar-se amb una activista que té en el punt de mira la gran corporació per la que treballeu tant tu com la teva germana. Però l'Anthea no pot evitar enamorar-se profundament de la Robin, una lluitadora amb trets físics ambigus que no l'encasellen en cap gènere concret. Tindrà conseqüències, és clar.

Retrobar-se amb Ali Smith després de recórrer el camí iniciàtic que és el quartet estacional era tota una incògnita. No és obra nova, 'Noia troba noi' és anterior a les quatre estacions, i en ella hi podem trobar clarament la llavor del que vindrà. Pocs personatges i una trama senzilla que estan al servei del retrat de l'actualitat que dibuixa l'autora. Smith, una gran observadora i cronista del nostre temps, es focalitza en temes concrets i construeix una història per explicar-nos-els a la seva manera.

En aquest cas ens fixarem en qüestions de gènere mitjançant la reinterpretació del mite d'Ifis i Iante, encarnada per la relació passional entre l'Anthea i la Robin, que també servirà per denunciar la discriminació de la dona i fer reivindicacions feministes. També hi ha una crítica al món publicitari, molt masculinitzat, al corporativisme i a les grans empreses que proporcionen tota mena de serveis. Pure, l'empresa on treballen la Midge i l'Anthea, aspira a ser un gegant empresarial i centra esforços en vendre aigua embotellada, com a bé preuat. Smith demostra ser visionària un cop més, anticipa el problema global que ens ve amb l'aigua dolça.

Més curt, menys complex i més entenedor que el quartet, això m'ha semblat. No vol dir més simple. No vol dir pitjor, al contrari. Ja m'he acostumat al peculiar estil de l'autora, en el que hi entres o no hi entres, i m'ha encantat. Me l'he empassat d'un glop d'aigua Pure. Gran petit llibre. Gran autora.

(SERGI)

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well this was my first Ali Smith book and I liked it a lot.
This novel is one of the Canon gate myth series, modern re tellings of ancient myths.
This one is the story of Ovids Iphis from Metamorphoses, the story of a girl who falls in love with a girl but on their wedding day turns into a boy so she can please her lover. (that's the short version!)
Ali Smith centres the story around 2 sisters Imogen (Midge) and Anthea.
It is told in both their voices and I loved them both.
I really liked Ali Smith's writing style, it was very readable, often funny and definitely of our time.
I'm going to leave it there apart from to say that if another book by this author turns up in my life I'll be very happy to read it.

Just a quote from the book to finish.

She had the swagger of a girl. She blushed like a boy. She had a girl’s toughness. She had a boy’s gentleness. She was as meaty as a girl. She was as graceful as a boy. She was as brave and handsome and rough as a girl. She was as pretty and dainty and delicate as a boy. She turned boys’ heads like a girl. She turned girl’s heads like a boy. She made love like a boy. She made love like a girl. She was so boyish it was girly, so girly it was boyish, she made me want to rove the world writing our names in every tree.

[deniz eilmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

do not be fooled by the title, this book is actually very gay

[Gohnar23 · Rating 5 out of 5]

#️⃣4️⃣5️⃣6️⃣ Read & Reviewed in 2025 💔🩸
Date : 🚀 Wednesday, September 10, 2025 🚫🔻❌
Word Count📃: 29k Words 🧨🔪🎈

⋆⭒𓆟⋆｡˚𖦹𓆜✩⋆ >-;;⁠;⁠;€ᐷ °‧ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 ·｡

( ˶°ㅁ°) !! My 30th read in "READING AS MANY BOOKS AS I CANNN 😢 cuz smth....happened.....irl.........😥" September ⚡

5️⃣🌟, girls and boys, girls and girls, and everything in between
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➕➖0️⃣1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣4️⃣5️⃣6️⃣7️⃣8️⃣9️⃣🔟✖️➗

I picked up this book because it reminds me of another book which is Boy meets Boy which I've already read but this one is a casual exploration of a topic that you've read about so many times already. LOVE. It talks about the simplicity of love and the connections that you get because of it. This book is more of a romeo and juliet type book when it comes to the story and narrative because it may be unrealistic at presenting the interactions of people but still makes the feelings and the symbolisms of love as real, this intense notion and expression that's endless and unending.

It is a love story that talks about many deep issues upon society and the different work around of people to it. The writing style is very intriguing and fascinating to say the least. It is a retelling of myths but i don't know the original is so this is my first exposure to this mythology. Everything is extremely poetic and reflects real messages and perceptions that anyone who's fallin in love can relate to. But this time it challenges general norms as the relationship present in here is extremely unconventional and maybe slightly taboo. There are political points that would really make you think and deep discussions on identity and connection that is simply incredible.

[Mark Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ali Smith's playful novella remixes the basis of Odin's Latin narrative poem The Metamorphoses, which tells of Iphys, born female and raised male.

Smith's retelling is energetic, exploring the rapture of love, fluidity of gender, protest and identity. A brilliant reworking of Greek mythology, effortlessly adapted for modern times. 

Was recommended this, something I wouldn't usually pick up myself but looking forward to starting some more Ali Smith. Very good. 

[Dannii Elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was nothing like the story I thought I was going to get, when starting to read the mythological retelling series. After reading a number of them I also think this might have been the most removed from the past and the most ingeniously creative production made with the base materials provided the author.

The fluidity of gender and sexual preference are depicted as wholly free and an undiluted joy in this book, but they become confused and constrained when the focus is removed from what feels right to the individual and, instead, what is deemed right by the constraints of society. I thought this brilliantly imaginative and full of so many questions and concerns, both historical and modern-day

[Chavelli Sulikowska · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been meaning to read an Ali Smith book for a long time, she comes highly recommended and so many friends have shoved her books my way. Perhaps this was not the best to start with - it's certainly not the most well known.

It is an unusual short and snappy read, very introspective with plentiful internal monologue gymnastics happening - as well as dialogue. So not much room for description. It is witty and very "now" so to speak - not just in terms of style but also theme - particularly gender (the main character is coming to terms with what she sees as her sister's sudden plunge into a gay relationship), but also environmental degradation, unfettered commercial greed (the bottled water company) and inequality.

I'm not sure I will enjoy Smith if all her novels are in this quick firee, jerky style - just not my thing, found the same problem with Sally Rooney and Normal People which everyone seemed to love. We shall see. For now, my year of reading (70) is complete, bring on 2021!