Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith
(Canongate)
I’ve worked in children’s books for six years now, and my confession is I rarely read adult’s fiction. I simply prefer (or am only able to cope with!) a rattling good story with everything else stripped away – in kids’ books there tends to be no room for anything else. So perhaps that’s why a contemporary book based on a myth – the most timeless of good stories – appeals.
Part of Canongate’s The Myths series, Girl Meets Boy is a retelling of the story of Iphis, daughter of Telethusa, who is brought up as a boy in order to keep her alive. She falls in love with Ianthe and is transformed into a man by the Egyptian God Isis in order to be able to marry. Smith’s version beautifully interweaves the telling of the original story with a modern day version. Living in Inverness, Imogen and Anthea are sisters and opposites in the way only siblings can be. Anthea is a free spirit, a wanderer with a strong sense of self, while Imogen is seeking to conform to a society norm that is making her increasingly miserable. Both are currently employed by Pure, a multinational bottled water company seeking to make as much money out of our most natural resource as possible. Then Anthea meets Robin, “she was the most beautiful boy I had seen in my entire life”, and everything changes. I don’t want to give too much away – you’ll have to pick up this perfect novella to find out the rest. It’s enough to say that it is about the triumph of the individual, and most importantly of love, over a bleak corporate world. Girl Meets Boy is a beautiful love story with an equally beautiful message: it is stories that help us survive, and which live on long after us.
Recommended by Anna Gibbons, Children's Programme Manager
July 2008
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