Glyph

Booker finalist Smith offers a clever and enjoyable companion piece to her 2025 novel, Gliff. Growing up in the 1990s, sisters Petra and Patch Wild are unsettled by wartime stories told at a family party, such as one about a soldier in WWI who was executed for putting a blinded horse out of its misery. They deal with their terror by creating a game in which they communicate with a made-up ghost. As adults, the sisters become estranged. Halfway through the novel, Petra is visited in her bedroom by a ghostlike horse. Unsure if she’s going crazy, she leaves a voicemail with Patch, asking for help, and the novel takes on exciting new dimensions over the course of their reunion, as Patch’s foster child Billie gets to know Petra for the first time, and the three of them explore what makes a family and a future. Smith effectively deploys narrative devices that will be familiar to readers of her fiction—precocious children, rapturous wordplay, and references to current events (the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine factor into the plot)—but her commentaries on AI can feel obvious and pedantic (“Every person has a soul. And no machine ever will”). Still, even a minor work from this accomplished and gifted writer remains a pleasure to explore. (May)