Girl Meets Boy

Anthea and her sister Imogen work in the orbit of Pure, a company that turns Scottish water into a marketable product. Imogen is invested in the language and expectations of that business; Anthea feels much less at home there. Meeting Robin, a graffiti artist and activist, changes Anthea’s relationship to both work and desire. Their attraction unsettles the categories through which other people try to understand them, while the sisters’ different responses expose tensions between conformity and freedom. Reworking Ovid’s story of Iphis, the novel connects a contemporary love story with questions about gender, transformation and ownership. Something as ordinary as falling in love becomes a challenge to the stories people are told to accept.