Girl Meets Boy

by Ali Smith

Imagine the present-day Iphis and Ianthe writing their slogans in bright red colour on the walls of public buildings in Inverness. (By the way, the word slogan indeed comes from Scottish Gaelic and means “battle cry” — I just looked it up.) Girl Meets Boy is a love story. You wouldn’t expect a book from Ali Smith which is not a love story. It is also about politics, women’s rights, and water. It reads like poetry.

Metamorphoses is full of the gods being mean to people, raping people then turning them into cows or streams so they won’t tell, hunting them till they change into plants or rivers, punishing them for their pride or their arrogance or their skill by changing them into mountains or insects. Happy stories are rare in it. But the next day dawned, and the whole world opened its eyes, it was the day of the wedding. Even Juno has come, and Hymen was there too, and all the families in Crete were gathered in their finery for the huge celebration all over the island, as the girl met her boy there at the altar. Girl meets boy, I said. In so many more ways than one. Old, old story, Robin said. I’m glad it worked out, I said. Good old story, Robin said. Good old Ovid, giving it balls, I said.