Girl meets Boy by Ali Smith

 The novel is funny  and  deeply serious , at the same time .When I started reading it , I thought it was all about gay relationships .But it turned  out to be much more than that and grew on me.It puts across the  gender based issues in such a remarkable  style that the reader can only  admire Ali Smith  with awe and wonder .It retells Ovid's gender-bending myth of Iphis and Ianthe , as seen through the eyes of two Scottish sisters in modern times.This myth originates in Book 9 of Ovid's Metamorphoses.
                        The book successfully bends the gender barriers, as  here:"She had the swagger of a girl.She blushed like a boy.She had a girl's toughness.She had a  boy's gentleness.
                 It has a unique way of highlighting gender-based discrimination. " WHEN YOU SEE A WRONG ,WRITE IT"  .Like:
1.Across the world,two million girls get killed before birth or at birth because they were not boys .That's on record .Add to that the off-record estimate of fifty-eight million more girls , killed because they weren't boys.That's sixty million girls.
2.All across the world, where women are doing exactly the same work as men, they 're being paid between thirty to forty percent less.That's not fair .This must change.
3.Two million girls annually forced into marriage worldwide.
4.Sexual or domestic violence affects one out of every three women and girls worldwide and this is the world's leading cause of injury and death for women.
5.Women occupy two percent of senior management positions in business worldwide.
6.Three and a half percent of the world's total number of cabinet ministers are women.Women have no ministerial positions in ninety three countries of the world.This must change.
                            Ali Smith is too good with words.On water :Still waters run deep . In deep water.Won't hold water.Get into hot water.Head above water.Throw cold water.It is good to be goal oriented.It makes all the other things go out of your mind "Mobiles get in the way of us living fully and properly in the present moment and connecting properly on a real level, with people and are just another way to sell us short."
                                   I read the paperback edition of this novel of 165 pages in 6 hours.It is  lively , interesting ,lyrical full of  freshness.It deals with extraordinary  energy  myth, story-telling, sexuality , gender , feminism and relationships  in modern times .I recommend you to read it .