In her latest novel Gliff, critically acclaimed author Ali Smith transports readers to a chilling dystopian Britain in the uncomfortably near future. Building upon the themes of her celebrated seasonal quartet, Smith crafts a powerful cautionary tale that serves as a stark warning about the dangers of unchecked surveillance, exclusion, and the erosion of individual rights.
At the heart of the story are two young siblings, Bri and Rose, who find themselves cast as “Unverifiables” in a society that has taken the concept of a hostile environment to terrifying extremes. Abandoned by circumstance and marked as outsiders, they must navigate a bleak landscape where the homes of those deemed undesirable are ruthlessly bulldozed, and faceless government forces relentlessly pursue those who don’t conform.
Through Bri’s precocious and word-loving voice, Smith paints a vivid picture of a surveillance state gone mad, where smartphones are “liabilities” and those who fail to submit to the dominant model of capitalism are literally redlined and erased. As Bri and Rose go on the run, readers are drawn into a haunting world where the disconnection between the haves and have-nots has become so extreme that the rich seem to look right through those they deem unworthy of notice.
A Masterful Dystopian Vision
In Gliff, Smith masterfully projects the troubling trajectories she identified in her previous works into a full-blown dystopia that feels all too plausible. With echoes of classic dystopian novels like Brave New World, she presents a grim future where societal fissures have widened into chasms and the boot of the state presses down mercilessly on the most vulnerable.
“It was like they all had their backs to me, even the ones facing me,” Bri observes of the privileged elite. “Their disconnect was what elegant meant.”
Yet even in this bleak landscape, Smith finds glimpses of hope and resistance. As Bri quietly subverts the system from within their role as a factory supervisor, we witness how small acts of rebellion can chip away at the edifice of tyranny. A surprise reappearance by a figure from Bri’s past sets off a chain of events that propel the story towards a more hopeful conclusion, suggesting that change is possible if we have the courage to fight for it.
The Power of Language and Metaphor
As always, Smith’s luminous prose and love of language suffuse the novel with a poetic power that belies its dark subject matter. The titular horse Gliff becomes a potent metaphor for the need to see and value others in their full complexity, not just as means to an end. Bri’s playful exploration of the layered meanings of Gliff’s “polysemous” name points to the liberating potential of language to contain multitudes and resist simplistic categorization.
“Because of what you called him,” Bri tells Rose, “he can be everything and anything.”
Through the resilience of its young protagonists, Gliff ultimately affirms the power of outsiders to hold a mirror up to society’s failings and light the way to a better future. As Smith suggests, if we can learn to truly see and care for one another, even those whose perspectives diverge from our own, there is still hope for us all.
A Wake-Up Call for Our Times
In an era of deepening divisions, widening inequality, and the creeping normalization of surveillance overreach, Gliff serves as a wake-up call about the dangers of complacency in the face of encroaching authoritarianism. By immersing us in a disturbingly plausible dystopia, Smith challenges readers to confront the dehumanizing trends already at work in our own world and imagine where they might lead if left unchecked.
Yet for all its urgency as a cautionary tale, Gliff is also a testament to the enduring power of empathy, solidarity, and moral courage in the darkest of times. Through her deeply humane portraiture of those pushed to the margins, Smith reminds us of the imperative to see the full humanity in one another, even and especially those deemed “unverifiable” by the cruel metrics of unjust systems.
In the end, Gliff stands as a powerful addition to Ali Smith’s body of work, a novel that is at once a warning, a lament, and a call to arms. By shining a light on the paths we must not take, it also illuminates the way forward – through resistance, compassion, and the stubborn insistence on valuing people as ends in themselves. In Bri and Rose, Smith has given us unforgettable guides for navigating the difficult roads ahead with moral clarity and unquenchable hope.
