Name: Girl Meets Boy
Rating: 3.774193548387097 (31 reviews)
ISBN: 9781921834448

Ali Smith

In Girl Meets Boy, Ali Smith reinterprets the Myth of Iphis, the girl who became a boy, as a brilliant hybrid of satire and romantic comedy. This is a warm, funny, subversive romp through the murky hinterland of corporate perfidy, by an author the Scotsman has described as 'one of our greatest imaginative writers'.

The Myth of Iphis

Girl Meets Boy

Girl meets boy. It's a story as old as time. But what happens when an old story meets a brand new set of circumstances? Ali Smith's re-mix of Ovid's most joyful metamorphosis is a story about the kind of fluidity that can't be bottled and sold. It is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation, a story of puns and doubles, reversals and revelations. Funny and fresh, poetic and political, Girl meets boy is a myth of metamorphosis for the modern world.

mooi gebruik van mythologie en literatuur in een modern jasje ☺️

tara  (she/her)

Girl meets boy. It's a story as old as time. But in Whitbread winner Ali Smith's lyrical, funny, mash-up of Ovid's most joyful gender-bending metamorphosis story, girl meets boy in so many more ways than one.

Disappointing but still enjoyable read. The concept behind the novel was the highlight, along with the setting of Inverness and Crete (two places I have been and loved!!). There were some lyrical passages that I enjoyed, but I found myself consistently in disbelief of the actions, conversations, and sentences of this book. I expected the book to make me think, but the plot was resolved in such an unconflicted manner that it left me with nothing to chew on. 

cedar winslow

Girl meets boy. It's a story as old as time. But what happens when an old story meets a brand new set of circumstances? Ali Smith's remix of Ovid's most joyful metamorphosis is a story about the kind of fluidity that can't be bottled and sold. It is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation, a story of puns and doubles, reversals and revelations. Funny and fresh, poetic and political, here is a tale of change for the modern world.

I really really liked the book. A lot. The prose was experimental and the rhetoric thought-provoking. There were some exceptionally beautiful passages that soaked the page and was golden and alive. However, my one niggle with the book, and this massively influenced my rating, was the blurb. The book sells itself as a retelling of Ovid's Metamorphoses. As a book about light and dark and change and identity and magic. And whilst there are certainly elements of these it didn't feel a modern Ovid. It was its own thing. Wonderfully, inventively, politically it's own work of fiction - certainly with strong intertextuality. But it also felt to me to reference Shakespeare, Angela Carter, Virginia Woolf. 

I thought the book massively sold itself short and marketed itself as something it wasn't - meaning that for the first few chapters I was confused and bored. It almost struck me as something Ali Smith had written earlier which was later co-opted by the publishers into a series of modern myths to capitalise on the current market.

To summarise. A good book but nothing like what I expected. 

hat carter

I really really liked the book. A lot. The prose was experimental and the rhetoric thought-provoking. There were some exceptionally beautiful passages that soaked the page and was golden and alive. However, my one niggle with the book, and this massively influenced my rating, was the blurb. The book sells itself as a retelling of Ovid's Metamorphoses. As a book about light and dark and change and identity and magic. And whilst there are certainly elements of these it didn't feel a modern Ovid. It was its own thing. Wonderfully, inventively, politically it's own work of fiction - certainly with strong intertextuality. But it also felt to me to reference Shakespeare, Angela Carter, Virginia Woolf. 

I thought the book massively sold itself short and marketed itself as something it wasn't - meaning that for the first few chapters I was confused and bored. It almost struck me as something Ali Smith had written earlier which was later co-opted by the publishers into a series of modern myths to capitalise on the current market.

To summarise. A good book but nothing like what I expected. 

Megan Paterson

I might be bias because I love a story based in Inverness but this story was incredible. An amazing look into words and our understanding of their meaning through society and deeper, a look into gender and relationships and love. Smith writes like a dream.

llikaditoo 

Laia Feliu

Marek R

Karen E

Melanie Knight

A STUNNING RETELLING BY THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR ALI SMITH'Joyful' JEANETTE WINTERSON'Pulls you in and doesn't let you go . . . bold and brilliant' JACKIE KAY'A glorious wide-awake dream of a book . . . By the time I finished, my heart was beating and tears stood in my eyes, even as I had the biggest smile written all over my face' KIRSTY GUNNGirl meets boy. It's a story as old as time. But what happens when an old story meets a brand new set of circumstances? Ali Smith's re-mix of Ovid's most joyful metamorphosis is a story about the kind of fluidity that can't be bottled and sold. It is about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation, a story of puns and doubles, reversals and revelations. Funny and fresh, poetic and political, here is a tale of change for the modern world.

cher elle

heleen de boever

Isobel 

Lili Vanden Wijngaert

Amber C

Sabine Delorme

Working with her sister, Imogen, at a Scottish bottled-water business, Anthea, flighty and bored with the corporate environment, falls for a protest artist nicknamed Iphisol, in a funny, lyrical adaptation of Ovid's gender-bending retelling of the myth of Iphis. By the author of the Whitbread Prize-winning author of The Accidental.

Girl Meets Boy The Myth of Iphis

Reviews

Highlights