Girl Meets Boy

Book Title: Girl Meets Boy

Author: Ali Smith

Date Started: August 2nd 2018

Date Completed: August 2nd 2018

Genres: Romance, Contemporary

Quality Rating: Five Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Stars

Final Rating: Five stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley and Canongate for this ebook for review ◆

Girl Meets Boy was one of the most wonderful books I've ever read. Impactful with its purpose and intimate with its style, Smith retells the story of Iphis with a new myth; one of acceptance, acitivism and love.

Smith shows intimacy with such a gentleness and quiet. Representation of homosexual relationships - especially between women - have long battled with the desire to be shown as just as fierce, but without the partiarchal competition that seems to be coded into our expectations of what romance should be. Smith doesn't try and pick one direction because she isn't really doing it for the sake of ticking the representation box; two of her heroines are lesbians because, well, they happen to be lesbians. It's a part of them, it's not there to move the story on. I think what caught me so deeply about this novel was the fact that the characters are so naturally themselves, in both their moments alone and with other people. Being able to show the difference between the two is what clinches it. That intimacy in the relationships, but also almost with the reader too, is what speaks so personally to the audience. There are sparks of humour that feel like in-jokes when we've seen them in the private world of a character before they share them on the outside.

The novel is just the right length, even under 200 pages. There's something to be said for a story that knows what it needs and fulfills that. While I understand the risks of publishing short books, there are so many out there that are padded with unnecessary filler that distracts from the actual story. Girl Meets Boy is short but to the point, and all the more powerful for it. The audience is left staring at the moral of the story (quite literally), and that's what makes it like a myth.

And the way in which Iphis' story is retold is so creative. It injects just the right amount of modernity to make it feel immediately relevant, while keeping those little ties back to the inspiration. For a Classics lover like, you get the feminist retelling as well as the storytelling of the original (of course the heroines know the Greek myths, of course they do). Iphis wasn't a myth I was quite as familiar with, but I still felt like I was in on the narrative. There are some retellings that are the spitting image of the original with a flowery sentence every few lines, or some are so distant from its inspirations that if you don't know the original to begin with you miss out on half the point of the whole book. Retellings are a wonderful platform for new commentary on the human experience within society, but some authors seem to forget that a commentary should be accessible by those it's commenting on. But Smith knows what she's doing; whether it's simply paralleling the myth of Iphis with her own heroines, or letting you sit down and enjoy our girls whispering the story to each other in bed, you don't have to have taken a classics degree to fall into this novel and (happily) never find your way out again.

Maybe it's particular to me, but I could see parts of myeslf in almost every character. And that's a truly rare and important thing. I'm definitely not the spitting image of any of our heroines and their supporting characters - I don't think I've ever found a character that I identify wholly with - but peering through the cracks and seeing individual qualities, reactions, and instincts reflected in a fictional creation still works wonders on the imagination. And it captures the essence of mythmaking because everything immediately feels cathartic because for once you feel as much like you're going through it with them as you can claim in a book review to make it sound nice.

I've always enjoyed reading Smith's stories, and there's no end to the way she can offer you an unexpected perspective on the human experience. But never have I fallen so in love with one of her books. This book caught me like a fish and it will be beloved to me for years to come.