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Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis (Canongate Myths)
 
 
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Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis (Canongate Myths) (Hardcover)

by Ali Smith (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
RRP: £12.99
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Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this book with Where Three Roads Meet (Canongate Myths) by Salley Vickers

Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis (Canongate Myths) + Where Three Roads Meet (Canongate Myths)
Price For Both: £13.08

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd (1 Nov 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1841958697
  • ISBN-13: 978-1841958699
  • Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.4 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 62,492 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review
"Spectacular... Original, restless, formally and morally challenging, [Ali Smith] remains a writer who resists definition." Times Literary Supplement "Smith plays dizzying games with her story and language... This is writing as pure rapture, as giddy delight." The Times "Ali Smith has got style, ideas and punch. Read her." Jeanette Winterson "She is an extremely readable, easy-flowing writer, and one of the subtlest and most intelligent around." Independent" 'Ali Smith is a true original' Joyce Carol Oates 'I love Ali Smith's work' Jeanette Winterson, The Times 'An extremely readable, easy-flowing writer and one of the subtlest and most intelligent around.' Independent

Janice Galloway
Frothy and packed with unexpected after-kick, Girl meets Boy's blend of heart, head and spirit is a splendid distillation

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Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis (Canongate Myths)
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Customer Reviews

12 Reviews
5 star:
 (6)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (12 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars I'd give it 10 stars if I could, 26 Mar 2008
By Other Stories (Oxford, UK) - See all my reviews
It's very rare that a book makes me cry real, actual, physical tears, but Girl Meets Boy by Ali Smith had me sobbing like a Brownie. Tears of happiness I might add: tears of happiness for the characters, and tears of happiness because the novel itself, the words Ali Smith had written, were just perfect.

The book is a modern-day retelling of the myth of Iphis, one of the few happy moments in Ovid's Metamorphoses, where Iphis the girl is transformed into Iphis the boy in time to marry Ianthe (a girl), the love of her/his life. In Smith's version, there are two sisters in Inverness, Midge (or Imogen) and Anthea. Midge works for Pure, a company selling bottled water to the middle class masses, while Anthea is dreamier. Anthea falls in love with Robin - a girl with her name spelled the boys way - when she daubs anti-capitalist slogans on the outside of the Pure building.

As the chapters jump from Anthea's voice, to Midge's, and back, we see two sisters coming to terms with their lives and their loves and their true feelings. The endings for both girls are truly euphoric both in plot terms and in the tone of Smith's evocative, provocative stream of consciousness prose:

"We'd thought we were along, Robin and I. We'd thought it was just us, under the trees outside the cathedral. But as soon as we'd made our vows there was a great whoop of joy behind us, and when we turned round we saw all the people, there must have been hundreds, they were clapping and cheering, they were throwing confetti, they waved and they roared celebration."

Ali Smith is at her best, too, when she writes about love. Rarely do I find a writer that can encapsulate the very essence of what it feels like to be in love, but she does it. And she did it in this book time and time again... there were passages I read over and over again just to savour the words and sentences and the feelings they evoked. I could almost taste them.

"I had not known, before us, that every vein in my body was capable of carrying light, like a river seen from a train makes a channel of sky etch itself deep into a landscape. I had not known that I could be so much more than myself."

And as if all this didn't tick enough of my boxes, Girl Meets Boy also contains a heartfelt rallying cry for women's rights. I shall leave you with these words, as they appear in this marvelous, beautiful little gem of a book:

"...sexual or domestic violence affects one out of three women and girls worldwide and it is the world's leading cause of injury and death for women... THIS MUST CHANGE"

Go on yoursel', Ali.

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20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Another brilliant book by Ali Smith, 3 Nov 2007
By Leo McMarley (Edinburgh) - See all my reviews
I'm a huge fan of all of Ali Smith's work and think that her latest offering at the pyre of reading is as good as anything she has written. She just seems to be getting better and better.

In Girl Meets Boy she takes the wonderful but fairly obscure myth of Iphis, a myth of transformation that is unlike anything I have ever come across before. In her hands it is recast and rewoven into something truly magnificent, a contemporary tale set in Inverness that will delight and devastate in equal measure. I cried on a number of occasions but they were sometimes tears of joy. I don't want to say anything else about the story as that might spoil it for you, other than "Go and buy this book". It is beautifully written, so ingeniously structured and wise in so many ways. Ali Smith is a goddess indeed who deserves to be worshipped!!
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars ...Into the longing that waits in a lucky place for two people..., 7 Jul 2008
By Val De Beer "Val De Beer" - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Girl Meets Boy (Canongate Myths) (Paperback)
' Girl meets boy' takes a new slant on an old myth - in this case the myth of Iphis. In order not to spoil any of the narrative, I shan't tell the story of Iphis but it is a beautiful story and in the words of Ali Smith ,it attains a wonder which is breath taking.

'It was the song of the flow of things, the song of the undammed river.....'
It is a story of love, of difficulty, of moral obligations and of women.

Within this book a plea is made for understanding and also for equal rights for equal beings.
It unveils the corruption at the heart of some corporate enterprises and gives the lie to some marketing propaganda.

The writing has the joyfulness of the free and it explores different styles of narration.

Do buy it - it will make you feel happy.

Val De Beer.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Ovidian Myths for the Modern Reader
The Canongate myths series goes from strength to strength with this addition to the oeuvre. Ali Smith has created a remarkably sweet and funny version of Ovid's gender swapping... Read more
Published 23 days ago by Mrs. K. A. Wheatley

2.0 out of 5 stars not my cup of tea
-very nicely written
-an interesting idea
-not really very satisfying
and i love mythology
Published 2 months ago by Ms. R. Jimenez

1.0 out of 5 stars girl meets boy
I am having great difficulty getting into this book and I am struggling at present to understand what it is about. Read more
Published 3 months ago by V. Hilsley

5.0 out of 5 stars The Thing of Legend
I have to admit that despite my mother being a Classics teacher, though possibly because of that, I have no recollection of many of the great myths. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Simon Savidge "savidgeread...

3.0 out of 5 stars Wolverhampton Libraries LGBT Reading Group Review
This contemporary tale, based in Inverness, is more than a modern-day retelling of the Iphis myth. Beginning with memories of the two sisters as children (listening to their... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Ms. R. Graham

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice read, hardly life changing
If you're more concerned with the style of writing rather than content then this book is for you. It's well written and has a certain flow to it. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Ayn Rand

4.0 out of 5 stars Girl Flows Into Boy
Ali Smith's work is poetic and lyrical even if it is often about the mundane: offices, supermarkets, overpasses, high street stores, people stuck in dead-end lives. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Oliver Redfern

5.0 out of 5 stars Astonishingly good
I always enjoy Ali Smith's writing, but have found some of her books to work better than others. "Girl Meets Boy" is the best novel of hers that I have read. Read more
Published 11 months ago by unlikely_heroine

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightful little book!
Very witty little book, which makes some interesting points eg comparing advertising with myth-making. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Lovetoread

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