Glyph

(by Ali Smith)

This book is about war stories and family stories and ghost stories and memories. It’s about the stories we tell each other, and the stories we tell ourselves, and the details that stick in our minds. It’s about Petra and Patch, who are sisters but have been estranged, but who end up back in touch in part because Patch mails a book to Petra (and the book is Ali Smith’s last book, Gliff, which, like this one, also includes a pair of siblings and a horse). Patch has an adopted teenager named Billie (though lately she goes by Bill) who doesn’t even know her mom has a sister, and that’s part of what this book is about too: what we know about people and what we don’t, and what our responsibilities are, to people we know and to people we don’t.