The premise of Ali Smith’s brilliant, dystopic novel Gliff doesn’t seem that far-fetched in a world where, currently, the forces of evil are riding high on the hog. In Ali Smith’s fictional England a few years down the political road, the sibling protagonists in Gliff are on the move from government agents circling houses and building with red paint where so called ‘unverifiables’ live so they can be picked up and be re-educated or disappeared. “They were largely unverifiable because of words. One person had been unverified for saying out loud that a war was a war when it wasn’t permitted to call it a war. Another had found herself declared unverifiable for writing online that the killing of many people by another people was a genocide”. Gaza anyone? Unverified because of a lack of a certain kind of document. Windrush? As I said not far-fetched. The reality is that not everyone has ‘just been following orders’, the hope that humanity and our animal selves will keep some kind of freedom alive. When our sibling heroes buy a horse along the way, it’s a symbol that nature when treated well is part of us, maybe the best part of us, “I’m bound to pass a field that’s got horses in it…I know how to hold my arm out with my hand open towards them. Maybe one or two of them will see me do this, raise their heads, maybe even start to cross that field towards me”. The part of us that may even help us against the worst of humanity, “They were shouting, one at each one of my ears. Won’t take long to break you”. Of course, this book is way subtler and more literary and playful than this review suggests, but I’ll leave that stuff to the broadsheet critics whose politics are generally as iffy as the owners they work for. If you want to look at it my way, Gliff is a subtle call to arms. Will we heed that call or let the worst of humanity in without a fight?

Gliff – Ali Smith

published by Penguin, £9.99

Steven Long