Book author: Deborah Levy

There is a quality of absorption that springs from Deborah Levy’s three living autobiographies. The writing is both sharp and gentle – perhaps it is the iron fist in the silk glove (silk being important for Levy in this the third of her non-fiction trilogy) – that eases you into her world, in which she travels and lives in different places, surrounded by different objects, walking in different shoes that sometimes have the wrong soles, and then hits you with a truth about what it means to be a woman and a writer in our world that sends you reeling. I feel as if I’m offered a new state to live in, a new way of attending to the events, the things, the conversations with friends and strangers, the overheard. I’m gifted some of Levy’s powers of attentive thought.

I like that she calls this trilogy of non-fiction about being a female writer, living autobiography because I do feel that I live the events, thoughts and ideas that she writes about. She generously invites me in through the door of her unreal estate, the house of her mind; she lets me put on her shoes; she asks me to consider her and then, of course, myself, in this new environment. Who built the house? Upon whose land is it built? What rights do I have to it? How can I live there? Should I leave? What can I take with me? What do I want my house to be like?

Continue reading Real Estate by Deborah Levy

I loved the first in this trilogy of autobiographies initially inspired by George Orwell’s essay ‘Why I write’. This second one was equally excellent.

As I’ve been better at reading than writing reviews lately, I wish I’d written my review of this book just after reading it, rather than now. As I turn its pages, looking at all the corners I’ve bent down to return to, what strikes me is how good Levy is at creating a feeling, a cohesive emotional and intellectual sensibility throughout a book that holds and shapes your experience of reading. You come away with an understanding of what she’s saying that feels more like the heightened emotional sense you get from a good conversation, than either an essay or an autobiography. You come away with the tingly feeling of inspiration.

Continue reading The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy

I loved this book. Written as a response to George Orwell’s 1946 essay ‘Why I Write’, Levy’s book, framed by her times-across the years-in a hotel in Spain, is a playful and painful exploration of all that led to her lifting the pen, pushing the keys, speaking with a louder voice. 

I wanted to turn down the corner of almost every other page and her choice of quotations from other writers was so perfectly apt that I wanted to go away and read those books too. She uses these quotations to push her thinking further. If, as Adrienne Rich said, ‘No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness’ then Levy unravels Motherhood (her capital letter) as ‘an institution fathered by masculine consciousness’ that leads to Levy staring at a poster in her bathroom of the skeletal system that she continuously misreads as the societal system and to tears on every upward escalator.

Continue reading Things I Don’t Want to Know by Deborah Levy

Saul Adler is in love. His girlfriend, Jennifer Moreau is about to photograph him on the zebra crossing on Abbey Road, in tribute to the famous The Beatles shot. And then he’s hit by a car. Continue reading The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy

This is the first Booker shortlisted novel I’ve read this year and Hot Milk didn’t disappoint.

Sofia travels to Spain to accompany her mother in her treatment at a private medical centre. For as long as Sofia can remember her mother has complained of aches and pains and has needed Sofia to tend to her, to fetch and carry, to bear the burden of care.

Her mother has mysterious pains in her feet that make it difficult for her to walk. She says her feet are numb, senseless, useless. When she can walk, she hobbles.

The medical centre forces Sofia and her mother to confront the mental health issues that beleaguer both their lives. Continue reading Hot Milk by Deborah Levy