Ali Smith's latest novel, GLYPH (not to be confused with her 2025 book, GLIFF; more on that later), opens with two stories of historical war, both of which were told by older relatives to sisters Petra and Patch when they were girls and have become part of their shared memories ever since. 

In the first, a young World War I soldier, taking pity on a horse who had been blinded by poison gas, leads him away from battle and a certain death --- only to be later court-martialed himself for deserting his post. In the second, as an elderly relative remembers it, something described as “a shape like a shadow, if a shadow were the opposite of dark. Or a fall of sunlight, if a fall of sunlight were to have no brightness in it” is spotted along the side of a road during World War II. The strange, flat shape is revealed to have been the body of a soldier, completely flattened on the road.

"GLYPH, though often bleak, is also filled with moments of connection, reconciliation, grace and surprising beauty. Like Ali Smith's other novels, those strange and singular moments will lodge themselves inside readers' memories for months and years to come."

Patch (short for Patricia) is particularly haunted by this second tale, perplexed by what might have happened to the man, saddened by his loss, and frightened by the fragility of the human body. The two sisters --- whose mother suffers from debilitating depression and whose father is often distant --- are very close, and Petra attempts to assuage Patch's fears by pretending to have a reassuring conversation with the dead man, whom she names “Glyph.” Glyph becomes a recurring character in their childhood years, and his supposed existence does make Patch feel better afterwards. But her stories about Petra's “clairvoyance” prompt friends and neighbors to also seek out their own contact with lost loved ones. 

Although the immediate crisis was averted for young Patch, the stories stuck with the sisters --- even across decades and a distancing in their relationship. However, the recollection prompts now middle-aged Petra to reach back out to Patch and try to determine not only the actual identity of the dead man but also the name of the older woman who related the story. Both sisters have experienced economic setbacks (with job losses due to AI and higher education cutbacks), and it seems as if a return to these stories, troubling as they are, might be a way back to the kind of closeness they once shared. 

Patch is dealing with her own challenges. Her adopted daughter, Billie, has been arrested after skipping school and attending a protest where, according to the officer, she was “waving a scarf in a markedly aggressive manner.” But when an alarmed Petra lets Patch know that the horse from the first story has resurfaced in a most unusual and troubling way, she and Billie make their way to her side. 

GLYPH is, in many ways, a companion to last year's GLIFF. On a surface level, both novels feature siblings and horses. But GLIFF took place in a near-future dystopia, and GLYPH is set in the present and recent past. There's some clever gesturing in GLYPH toward its predecessor --- Petra and Billie bond over their shared reading of an unnamed book that readers familiar with GLIFF will recognize --- but each novel also can be enjoyed entirely on its own merits. Longtime fans of Smith's work will appreciate her continued exploration of the names of things. Only Smith, for example, could pen a three-page digression on the meanings of the word “stanchion” and make it both riveting and funny.

If GLIFF is about a dark but likely future, then GLYPH is about the complicated ties between the wars of the past and those of the present. The scarf that Billie wears, although not specified, seems likely to be a keffiyeh worn by many supporters of Palestinian liberation. At one point, Billie exhorts her mother and aunt to stop focusing so much on minor details of historical wars and instead wake up to the atrocities currently underway in our world. GLYPH, though often bleak, is also filled with moments of connection, reconciliation, grace and surprising beauty.

Like Ali Smith's other novels, those strange and singular moments will lodge themselves inside readers' memories for months and years to come.