Glyph by Ali Smith: an anti-war novel that urges you to see clearly
Blindness vs delusions, chattering vs throttling of voices. Dead people and the ones alive looking away — uneasy, tamping down their conscience. And then, some courageous gestures and kind – leading a blind horse away from the battlefield, telling a little girl that her dead pet dog Shandy is in a good place, chewing baskets, 16 year olds protesting, questioning, determined to be the voice the world needs to hear. Ali Smith’s Glyph is a medley of impressions and thoughts that swirl in your consciousness, with certain threads clearly standing out, those of war and how we humans deal with it.
“After he’d gone, I studied the surface of the kitchen table. I wondered what happened to those people who didn’t have children in whom they could be said to have survived when they died. Did that mean they died a double death, disappeared twice as hard, because there was nobody left to represent them physically in the world?”
Petra and Patch, sisters, neither having children. They have a deep bond, of shared childhood trauma and coping with it by making up imaginary people in their lives, calling back ghosts, talking with the dead, seeing things no one saw and in their adulthood, hearing noises no one heard.
We see them as little girls, making up Glyph and holding the burden of confessions that people generations before them had made about their choices in times of war. They carry these stories and turn them over and over in their imagination, making them a sort of refuge when their own life becomes too much to handle.
The book traces what happened in the lives of certain people in World War I and II and the other wars that we are waging now. In Gaza, in Ukraine and the systemic starving, annihilation and also of us looking away, switching off the TVs and letting our guilt fester within.
In spite of war and the widespread destruction, the book appeals to the softness of our hearts with accounts of horses going blind because of being gassed and dogs being put away because they are inconvenient. There’s art too, Edward Munch’s The Pathfinder’s details are on the cover and the front endpaper. The fine mishmash of all things resembles a bit of our minds, where the ugly, the cruel and unfair jostles with unexpected beauty, kindness and clarity.
Puns abound in the book and the wordplay is a discovery meant to be made. As in Ali Smith’s novels, everyone talks the same, be it adult or child but the tonality and the relentless language delivers the message as intended.
Glyph is a standalone book and also the second in a series after Gliff.
About Ali Smith
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962. She is the author of several novels and short story collections including, The Accidental, Hotel World, How to Be Both and the Seasonal Quartet. She has been four times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, has won the Goldsmiths Prize, Orwell Prize, Costa Best Novel Award and the Women’s Prize. Ali Smith lives in Cambridge.
