A glorious wide-awake dream of a book...Smith is a gravely moral writer - and that is partly why her contribution to the world of myth is so powerful. . . By the time I finished the book, my heart was beating and tears stood in my eyes, even as I had the biggest smile written all over my face. -- Kirsty Gunn * * Observer * *
In this modern-day reinterpretation, Ali Smith, with humour and typical linguistic versatility, explores issues of homophobia, corporate and social responsibility and the sheer vertiginous feeling of falling in love . . . a delicate tale with a solid message of conscientious objection at its heart. -- Catherine Taylor * * Independent On Sunday * *
The novella is authentically Ovidian in its lightness, grace and exuberance...It's a lovely piece or writing. -- Allan Massie * * Scotsman * *
Girl Meets Boy is not about life after death, but it is a joyful celebration of life in all its strange shapes, on all sides of the wall. -- Jeanette Winterson * * The Times * *
Everywhere there is playfulness, mischief, delight in love and language, startlingly graceful trapeze-leaps of thought. Smith writes with unplugged energy of the fiddler she conjures up to play at Anthea's dream wedding . . . -- Jennie Renton * * Sunday Herald * *
The tale is charming, the prose (in places) poetic. . . Smith remembers what the ancients knew: that musical words drum a beat through to understanding. -- Bettany Hughes * * The Times * *
It is a clever use of the myth, and Ali Smith has delivered another exuberant cascade of words; the romance is described in a lyrical flood and Imogen's part is dealt with mainly in accomplished streams of consciousness. * * Spectator * *
...a sweet and perceptive take on lesbian love in Scotland...As fanciful as it is honest and as moving as it is hilarious, this is a gorgeous story. -- Alexandra Heminsley * * London Paper * *
Girl Meets Boy is a joyful, experimental work. Smith deftly employs all kind of linguistic tricks to paint her characters . . . Smith is a playful writer who takes fun seriously, and whose ease, erudition and eloquence can sometimes be mistaken for an end in itself . . . I'm sure that the urbane and witty Ovid would have wholeheartedly approved. -- Stuart Kelly * * Scotland On Sunday * *
The skeleton of the story itself is intriguing, but the flesh that Smith chooses to give it is clever, complex and thrilling ... Girl Meets Boy delights because it refuses to stop at a single metamorphosis; despite its compactness, its stories multiply and rebound exuberantly ... -- Alex Clark * * TLS * *
[Ali Smith's] exuberant paeans to physical love and emotional attachment are the most infectious verbal explosions that I've read in a long time, and the concluding celebrations on the banks of the Ness among the happiest evocations put to paper this year. Wittily and briefly, Smith captures the mood of the myth as well as its meaning. -- Laurence Wareing * * Herald * *
A joyful and playful remix . . . The result is an ecstatic, exhilarating helter-skelter ride of a story which shows just how relevant Ovid's myth of the transformative power of love is to modern readers. -- Emma Jacobs * * Financial Times * *
Smith's style encompasses both the lyricism of poetry and the energy of a well-told joke, and she has a keen appreciation for magic of the everyday kind, be it the way musical notes are transformed into the song of a blackbird, or the precise moment two people meet and fall in love. -- Amber Pearson * * Daily Mail * *
Smith creates a story of the head-spinning ecstasy of falling in love...Her ideas are rich, complex and thrillingly life-affirming...Gentle, generous and wonderfully imaginative, this is a joy to read. -- Tina Jackson * * Metro * *
Girl Meets Boy is certainly infectious in its enthusiasm for the notion of unfettered true love... -- Hannah McGill * * Scottish Review of Books * *
