Gliff channels dystopia through the eyes of a child

Briar and Rose, the two siblings at the heart of Gliff, live in a world that feels like an uncomfortably believable near-future version of our own. People still use smartphones, and they’re always glued to them. Most kids have an “educator” (a smartwatch) strapped to their wrist, and it records every interaction they have. Everyone’s identity and family history is logged in detail on the cloud and can be pulled up via facial recognition — except for “unverifiables” like Briar and Rose, who reject contemporary technology and live on the fringes of society, evading detection. If captured, unverifiables are forced to undergo “reeducation” and given work assignments that often come with deplorable conditions.

Gliff sees two adolescent children confronting their own Brave New Word, and that very phrase is repeated and deconstructed over the course of the book. It’s a strange and somber novel that contains a lot of wordplay. I don’t know why I keep picking up dystopian fiction that feels a little too close to home, but this one especially struck a chord with me. I loved the dynamic between the kids, and the way an encounter with a horse comes to define their lives as acts of resistance. It’s all a little heartbreaking, but their humanness is real and a refreshing contrast to the inhuman surveillance state around them. I was excited to hear that there is a followup coming called Glyph. I’ll definitely be reading that when it’s out.