Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
Girl Meets Boy
(2007)
Ali
Smith
(August 24, 1962 – )
Notes
for Lucy Cuthbertson: drama teacher who directed several of Ali Smith's plays
for Sarah Wood: Ali Smith's partner
4 Blind Date: A British dating game show, aired Saturday nights at 7 p.m.
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19 If you can keep your head when all about you: An allusion to Rudyard Kipling's poem "If—"
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! |
120 Milton Keynes:
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Comprehension Check I
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Study Questions
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Review Sheet
Characters
Anthea Gunn
– "Now I had a job too, thanks to Midge"
(22); "Anthea Gunn, Pure Creative" (24); "I was twenty-one years old. My
hair was light and my eyes were blue. I was Anthea Gunn, named after
some girl from the past I'd never seen, a girl on a Saturday evening tv
show who always gave things a twirl" (25); "You and that good-looking
little sister [Anthea] of yours" (67); "And then you [Anthea] went
straight outside and threw a stone at the kitchen window, do you
remember that?" (17); "I should have told them to put it into your Pure
psychology report. High suggestible. Blindly rebellious" (18); "It had
rained every day here since I'd got back, all eight days" (19); "You
could call it Affluent, I said" (40); "I'm dead, I thought" (41)
Imogen Gunn, Midge
–
"My name's not Midge, Midge says" (8); "Grandad, you're like insane,
Midge says. Because if you work it out, even if you were a
girl, that story would make you born right at the beginning of the
century, and yeah, I mean, you're old and everything, but you're not
that old" (16); "My name's Imogen, Midge says and gets down off his
knee" (16); "who went and bought a motorbike for thousands of pounds
because it's got the word REBEL painted on it?" (18); "She was far too
thin" (39); "I am down to just over seven stone" (52); "Imogen. She
had to do all that mother stuff when ours left" (98)
Robin Goodman –
"It was a lad, dressed for a wedding" (42); "He had long dark hair
winged with ringlets, like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean,
but cleaner. He was spray-painting, in beautiful red calligraphy,
right under the Pure insignia, these words: DON'T BE STUPID. WATER IS
A HUMAN RIGHT. SELLING IT IN ANY WAY IS MORALLY WRO" (43); "We watched
the long-limbed boy sign off, with a series of arrogant and expert
slants and curlicues, the final word at the bottom of his handiwork:
IPHISOL" (44); "She was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen in my
life" (45); "I was terrified, too, when I was twelve and wanted to
marry another girl." (96)
Robert Gunn, Rob,
grandfather, grandad –
"grandfather worked in a circus before he met and married our
grandmother" (3); "Always the eye for the lasses" (9); "Your
grandfather likes to think that all the stories in the world are his
to tell" (17); "He looked smooth, sweet-faced, almost girlish" (21);
"LOST AT SEA 2003" (22)
Helen Gunn,
grandmother –
"so she can watch the football results" (5); "She looked strong,
clear-boned, like a smiling young man from some Second World War film
had climbed inside an older skin" (21)
Paul – "Fluidity, a nice shavey called out next to me [Anthea]" (38); "Well done, Paul. Run with it. The whole room turned and bristled with jealousy at Paul" (39)
Keith – "(Keith sounded American. I'd not yet met Keith. Keith was the boss of bosses.)" (34); "Keith, she'd [Becky on Reception] told me, flew over for these meetings specially. He flew in every Monday, then out again after every Tuesday Creative Lecture" (36)
Dominic, Dom – "Are you retarded? Greg Dyke. Remember? Dominic says" (68)
Norman, Norm – "Where've you been, you useless slag? Norman says" (62)
Father – "our father, out in the garden in the first days after she went, hanging out the washing" (99)
Mother –
"Back in history The Generation Game was our mother's favourite
programme, way before we were born, when she was as small as us. But
our mother isn't here any more" (4); "Anthea Gunn, named after some
girl from the past I'd never seen, a girl on a Saturday evening tv
show who always gave things a twirl, who always wore pretty frocks,
and whom my mother, when she herself was a little tiny girl, had
longed with all her heart to be like when she finally grew up"
(25–26); "(It's our mother's fault for splitting up with our father.)"
(49); "Before she left, my mother gave me a compass" (85); "she had to
be free of what people expected of her, otherwise she’d simply have
died" (98–99)
Mary Isobel Gunn – "Your great-grandmother wrote her name with Xs. X X X. Mary Isobel Gunn" (7)
Brian –
"Well done, Anthea, on finally getting in" (32); "He was called
Brian. Thank you, gods" (33)
Becky –
"You're late, Becky on Reception said as I went past. Careful. They're
looking for you" (31)
Places
Scotland –
"Scottish rain's no myth, it's real all right" (19)
Inverness – "I had a home here in Inverness, thanks to Midge" (22–23)
riverbank – "I went down the side of the riverbank and sat in among the daffodils." (26)
River
Ness – "There was blossom on the surface of the Ness, close to the bank,
lapping near my feet, a thin rime of floating petals that had blown off
the trees under the cathedral behind me." (26); "The river itself was
fast and black. It was comforting. It had been here way before any town
with its shops" (27); "The river laughed." (28)
Pure
Boardroom two – "Boardroom two, he [Brian] said. Five minutes. Okay
Anthea?"
England – "(It is really English down here in England.)" (109)
Pure Base Camp – "(This is
Base Camp? Milton Keynes?)" (120)
Crete – "I've been there! We went there! I said. We had a holiday there when we were kids." (88)
Heraklion
hospital – "We spend a lot of it at the hospital in Heraklion, actually,
because our dad went to hire a motobike to impress this woman in a
motorbike hire shop" (88)
Time
2007 – "the year, the oh and the seven of two thousand and seven" (83)
Monday
morning – "I'd better not be late" (18); "I was going to be late for
work. I was late already" (25)
night
– "He [Paul] won't come out on a Monday night because of University
Challenge being on" (63); "It's Monday. There's work tomorrow" (65)
2:30 a.m. – "It was half past two in the morning." (86)
2003 – "Five years ago they [Robert and Helen
Gunn] went on holiday to Devon" (22); "ROBERT AND HELEN GUNN
BELOVED PARENTS AND GRANDPARENTS LOST AT SEA 2003" (22)
1992
–
Saturday – "It is
Saturday evening; we always stay at their house on Saturdays" (3); "the
Saturday toast, the Saturday television" (23)
"A long time ago" – "A long time ago on the island of Crete a woman was pregnant"
(86)
Vocabulary
Plot
Freytag's
Pyramid
linear, nonlinear, linearity
beginning, middle, end
inciting incident
chance, coincidence
plot, main plot, minor plot, subplot, underplot, double plot,
story
conflict, internal conflict, external conflict, clash of actions, clash of
ideas, clash of desires, clash of wills, major, minor, emotional, physical
suspense
(suspenseful)
mystery (mysterious, mysteriously, mysteriousness)
dilemma
surprise (surprising, surprised)
plot twist
ending
artistic unity (unified)
time sequence
exposition
in medias res
complication (complicate)
rising action
falling action
crisis
climax
anti-climax (anti-climactic)
conclusion (conclude, conclusive)
resolution (resolve, resolving)
denouement
flashback, retrospect
back-story
foreshadowing
causality
plot structure
initiating incident
epiphany
disclosure, discovery
movement, shape of movement
trajectory
change
focus
setting
Character; characterization
major
characters
minor characters
protagonist
antagonist
stock or type characters
stereotypes
foil
self-revelation
personality
direct presentation of character
indirect presentation of character
show v. tell
consistency in character behavior
motivation
plausibility of character: is the character credible? convincing?
flat character
round character, multidimensional character
static character, unchanged
developing character, dynamic character, active character
direct methods of revealing character:
indirect characterization
diction;
denotation, connotation
repetition
literal language
figurative language
wordplay
pun
metaphor
simile
overstatement
understatement
image
imagery
allusion
symbol, symbolic, symbolism
irony, ironic
theme
stories; storytelling
myth; mythmaking
transformation
identity
FAQ and Discussion
Q: What is the gender of the grandfather?
D1: He is a man. He is "grandfather," and married to Helen who is the children's "grandmother," and Imogen, young though she in the opening scene of the novel, repeatedly insists that he is not a girl: "For saying you were a girl when you weren't one" (6),"And I looked a bit like a boy. Yeah, Midge says, cause you were one" (13), and "Grandad, you're like insane, Midge says. Because if you work it out, even if you were a girl, that story would make you born right at the beginning of the century, and yeah, I mean, you're old and everything, but you're not that old" (16).
D2: Why is a young child a reliable detector of gender?
D3: Not any young child, but an observant granddaughter of the person in question.
D4: Why is it a jolt that he is introduced "when I was a girl" and "our grandfather"?
D3: It shouldn't be? It's not uncommon that people have physical characteristics of or are treated as a gender that they do not identify with, or are born into a biological body that does not align with their gender perception.
D1: It should be. The jolt is intended to expose readers' gender assumptions.
D2: Despite millennia long history of diverse gender presentation from ancient Greece with the story of Iphis and Ianthe, the jolt still works. Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, another (mythical?) literary figure, also gender-shifts.
Q: What is going on with tense use in this novel?
D1: This is related, isn’t it, to the grandfather telling stories as if he were in history, i.e. his helping Burning Lily escape (pp. 15–16)?
Q: Why does Midge have so many names?
D1: Midge
is the family nickname that she dislikes.
D2: Imogen is her official name.
D3: Dominic calls her “Madge” at the pub (62). Three names so far. What
does the name Midge suggest or connote, as opposed to Madge or Imogen?
D1: Four: Also at the pub, Norman calls her "useless slag" (62) which she immediately objects to: "Don't call me that, I say."
D4: It’s
not only Imogen who goes by several names. Robin Goodman also goes by
names that multiply by year: Iphis05, Iphis06, Iphis07.
D1: Yes, and there are more, especially those that she did not give
herself. There’s the misunderstood Iphisol, and then there are names that
people foist on her like LEZ, inscribed on her notebook by high school
classmates Denise and Imogen, or, more precisely “I write the letters and
she draws the arrow pointing at them” (73).
D2: Teachers naturally get called names, like the geography teacher Miss
Horne is called “Horny Geog” (73).
D4: Let’s not forget the big to-do with “greg” (66), how that
transformation of the proper name Greg Dyke of the former BBC general
director into an adjective greggy (66), a general noun greg (67),
and a verb gregging.
D5: That scene sees an explosion of Robin names: thespian (68), lickian,
freakshow, dyke.
D1: Imogen later calls her in her frequent parentheses "the weirdo vandal" (59). Not to mention "a lass and a lack" (76) and a string of "so many words" that also apply to her little sister: "unfuckable, not properly developed, and not even worth making illegal.)" (70).
D3: Do we count unspoken names as names? Like when Imogen is unable to utter the word for her sister and Robin, for example, "(Oh my God and also my sister is a )" (74) and "(I am sitting in the same room as a )."
D4: So multiplicity of names as an evasion for a delicate or objectionable identity? In the case of lesbianism. But for Imogen, Midge, Madge, useless slag?
D5: In the case of Burning Lily, her many names are a protection, a deliberate obfuscation of identity: "She used lots of different names in court. Lilian. Ida. May" (12). Being hidden or invisible behind untrue names as an empowering tool?
D2: In the case of many other women of that generation, her legal signed name was a generic representation of a name: "Your great-grandmother wrote her name with Xs. X X X. Mary Isobel Gunn" (7). Each blank X stood for a different personal name. Is the X empty or full of possibilities? X as both undifferentiated and unique, as no one's name and everyone's name?
D3: How can something not your name be your name? This is a concept that Imogen struggles to grasp. "I need to know the proper word," she says (77). Brian is also called "Bri" (63) and Anthea is affectionately called "Anth" by Robin (90). Is it hard to understand that there can be many variations or names of the same thing and they can all be correct and right?
D1: Fixating on the proper, right or correct name can be a pitfall though, because the same word or name, in another's mouth, in another tone, or context, can be bad. Greg, which is a very proper name (pun intended), as we mentioned earlier, can become the very insulting greg. The desirable label Rebel when transferred from the motorcycle to Anthea's mouth insults Imogen in their conversation before work (18).
D2: Fixation is a good point. In this novel Ali Smith really goes out of her way to warn against being dogmatic. It becomes absurd to obsess about Anubis being a dog or a god, for example, when he's a dog-god.
D3: He's not a dog. He's a god.
D2: Exactly. Even if he has a head like a jackal. We describe him as a dog-god, not because he's half dog half god or because he's both dog and god, but because of his head.
D5: So passages like "We were all that, in the space of about ten minutes. Phew. A bird, a song, the insides of a mouth, a fox, an earth, all the elements, minerals, a water feature, a stone, a snake, a tree, some thistles, several flowers, arrows, both genders, a whole new gender, no gender at all and God knows how many other things including a couple of fighting stags" (104) are designed to unfix us from definite names and labels. Who gets to own a name? Pure? Copyright it and put any violators in jail? Now that it's incorporated, no one and nothing can ever be pure? If Anthea's name is a coming up of flowers, Imogen can't be the one who plants in the riverbank for a spring slogan to appear? If a woman gets to own tenderness, the blush, grace and delicacy, then no wonder a man who ever exhibits any of these qualities will be called effeminate.
D4: I don't like that she's being didactic, spelling it all out, trying to teach readers so obviously.
D1: Ha! Can being didactic also be good literature? Or does didacticism preclude serious literary merit?
D2: That's another name trick question? If the novel teaches you something, it can't be a good novel? One label precludes the other? So Iphis the boy-girl is impossible? Grandfather the girl-boy? Robin the him/her Goodman (149)? The message boy-girls (138)? A myth that's true history? A dream that's reality? A fiction that's true?
D3: It does look like names matter, for a lot of people, and for a lot of things as well, even though it shouldn't always be. In the case of Girl Meets Boy, I think Ali Smith is brilliantly creative about name playing us.
D5: Not in too condescending a way?
D1: Take it in the spirit of the interactive storytelling that is modeled by grandfather and his two nieces (3–17), and by Robin and Anthea (88–101). I think you should be able to talk back, voice your opinions and disagreement. It's actually welcome. And the storyteller won't be mad at you for thinking critically and voicing your ideas sincerely. What would society be like full of yes-people agreeing on everything? It would actually be full of problems because nobody would dare point them out, with no one to name Pure anything else with a good illegal act, with beautiful graffiti.
D2: Five: Keith calls Imogen "my little Scotty dog" at the Pure Base Camp (124).
D3: That's a terrible name! Yet she doesn't object to it the way she almost consistently when anyone calls her less than what she thinks she deserves, even "Midge." Surprising?
D5: Not at all, like the "Dear God" moment with Paul (133), there is something much greater than personal affront at stake. The issue there is sixty million girls killed globally because of objection to the fact that they were not boys. Graffiti that might offend city residents and officials pales in comparison. At Base Camp, the hijacking of water by Pure Corporation is wrong is so many ways and negatively affects so many billions of people across the planet that she immediately and unsurprisingly objects to it over a personal slight: "Keith, that's ridiculous [...] Those words you just used are all in the wrong places" (124). That's consistent.
D4: Yeah,
"water's exact designation" (124), how water is being renamed, i.e.
rebranded, is a hugely worse offense. It insults logic, ecology, dignity,
law, life, and just about anything we can imagine.
Sample
Student Responses to Ali Smith's Girl
Meets Boy
Response 1:
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Reference
Links
Interviews
- Alex Clark, "Ali Smith: 'There are two ways to read this novel, but you're stuck with it – you'll end up reading one of them,'" The Guardian (2014).
- Adam Begley, "The Art of Fiction No. 236," The Paris Review, no. 221 (2017)
Media
- Ali Smith, "Costa Book Awards 2014," Costa Coffee (2015; 1:49 min.)
- Ali Smith, "How Should Authors Approach the Task of Writing a Novel Today," Edinburgh World Writers' Conference (2012; 1 hr. 55:59 min)
Ali Smith
- "Ali Smith," British Council (biography, critical perspective, bibliography)
Reference
Smith, Ali. Girl Meets Boy.
2007. Canongate, 2015.
Further
Reading
Smith, Ali. The Accidental. Hamish Hamilton, 2005.
Smith, Ali. Autumn. Hamish Hamilton, 2016.
Smith, Ali. Free Love and Other Stories. Virago, 1995.
Smith, Ali. Spring. Penguin, 2019.
Smith, Ali. Summer. Penguin, 2020.
Smith, Ali. There but for The. Penguin, 2011.
Smith, Ali. Winter. Hamish Hamilton, 2017.
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Last updated August 4, 2022