Boy Meets Girl Girl Meets Boy Views

General Goods

I can definitely verify that the Myths series is available in the US, though each book tends to become available about 6 months after it comes out in the UK. I was extremely faithful to the series up until I didnl’t quite hit it off with Salley Vickersk’s contribution, so I havenv’t picked up the Michel Faber yet even though I did order it right away. I think my favorites so far have been The Penelopiad, Girl Meets Boy, Dream Angus (Alexander McCall Smith) and Binu and the Great Wall (Su Tong). Hm and I liked Weight (Jeanette Winterson) a lot too. So thatc’s practically the whole series!

The myth of Iphis is one of the happier of Ovid's metamorphoses: the girl raised as a boy to avoid her father's wrath falls in love with another girl, upon which her gender is changed by the sympathetic goddess Isis to enable them to marry. It's a felicitous story among the accounts of rapes and murders, the agony of bodily transformation. 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.

Robin is one of Smith's specialities, a mysterious, smooth-talking, desirable female catalyst. She o"had a girl's toughness. She had a boy's gentleness. She was as meaty as a girl. She was as graceful as a boy...g" . Soon she and Anthea embark on a gleeful urban guerrilla rampage against convention and consumerism, and an even more interesting investigation of sexuality. Midge is comically appalled: "My little sister is going to grow up into a dissatisfied older predatory totally dried up abnormal woman like Judi Dench in the film Notes on a Scandali" hndash; until an urgent concern emerges in the form of a promotion at Pure. Having come up with a new brand of water, Eau Caledonia, Midge is invited to a bunker-like think-tank known as Base Camp, where her boss, the menacing Keith, confides Pure's long-term strategy for global domination and exploitation. Midge's role will be to lie publicly about the company's intentions.

Girl Meets Boy is a delicate tale with a solid message of conscientious objection at its heart. It reaches a joyful conclusion in which the formalised pairing off of couples is more reminiscent of Shakespearean comedy than the gruesome imagery of Ovid. Keith enquires of his team: w" How, precisely, do we bottle imagination?a" Effervescent retellings such as this perhaps provide the answer.