Unlike some of the undisputed classics of dystopian literature, for example Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1984 by George Orwell or Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, who in a more or less defined and precise way show what the monstrously controlling societies that they literary in their new novel are like and how they function. Gliff, the British Ali Smith (1962) only shows it to us in a vague, partial way, based on a few significant details, creating a global drawing that tends to be abstract. He does this intentionally, of course, and this, let's say, deliberate imprecision has a frankly disturbing suggestive power in the best passages of the work. Overall, it deprives it of its symbolic and representative capacity, deactivating its expressive force and lowering its emotional and dramatic temperature.