A review by hesmykindofgirl
Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis by Ali Smith

3.0

"Reader, I married him/her"

As you can probably tell by my name, I'm a huge fan of the myth of Iphis and Ianthe, and so went into this book with huge expectations. This is never a very good way to enter into a book, and I was, predictably, let down.

A lot of the issues stemmed from its short length. The amount of time that was dedicated to Imogen, for example, wouldn't be a problem if the book was longer, but the shortness of the book meant that these pages felt so wasted to me - we hardly got to see our Ianthe and our Iphis. It was particularly frustrating how little Robin's character was explored outside his/her effect on Anthea's life.

The length of the book meant there was also a lot of telling rather than showing. We had the Ovid myth repeated to us, but we didn't actually see Robin and Anthea embodying or reacting to this tale at all.

But then again, there were some sections that were so well written that it is hard to mark this down any lower. This section, for example, is well quoted from this book, and for good reason:

"She had the swagger of a girl. She blushed like a boy. She had a girl’s toughness. She has a boy’s gentleness. She was as meaty as a girl. She was as graceful as a boy. She was as brave and handsome and rough as a girl. She was as pretty and delicate and dainty as a boy. She turned boys' heads like a girl. She turned girls' heads like a boy. She made love like a boy. She made love like a girl. She was so boyish it was girlish, so girlish it was boyish, she made me want to rove the world writing our names on every tree. I had simply never found someone so right. Sometimes this shocked me so much that I was unable to speak."

In general, I did appreciate the way gender was explored in this. Usually in fiction, nonbinary characters are presented as a sort of "third gender." Though this is how a lot of people feel about being nonbinary, a lot of other people experience being nonbinary through being both genders, a combination of the two, fluidity between the two. I loved the way that Robina (and Anthea) are shown to switch between being boys and girl- they encompass both, neither, something in between. I just wish the book had more time to explore this, but again this may come down to its short length.