Hot Milk
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3.8 • 12 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016
A richly mythic, colour-saturated tale from the Man Booker-shortlisted author of Swimming Home—Deborah Levy explores the violently primal bond between mother and daughter.
Two women arrive in a Spanish village—a dreamlike place caught between the desert and the ocean—seeking medical advice and salvation. One of the strangers suffers from a mysterious illness: spontaneous paralysis confines her to a wheelchair, her legs unusable. The other, her daughter Sofia, has spent years playing the reluctant detective in this mystery, struggling to understand her mother's illness.
Surrounded by the oppressive desert heat and the mesmerising figures who move through it, Sofia waits while her mother undergoes the strange programme of treatments invented by Dr. Gomez. Searching for a cure to a defiant and quite possibly imagined disease, ever more entangled in the seductive, mercurial games of those around her, Sofia finally comes to confront and reconcile the disparate fragments of her identity.
Hot Milk is a labyrinth of violent desires, primal impulses, and surreally persuasive internal logic. Examining female rage and sexuality, Deborah Levy's dazzling new novel explores the strange and monstrous nature of motherhood, testing the bonds of parent and child to breaking point.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Is Donald Duck a child or hormonal teenager or an immature adult? Or is he all of those things at the same time, like I probably am?" These questions come from the memorable heroine of Booker-finalist Levy's (Swimming Home) novel: 25-year-old Sofia, who instead of pursuing her anthropology Ph.D. works in a coffee shop in London and spends much of her time caring for her sick and complaining mother, Rose. The two have traveled to arid Almer a on Spain's southern coast to visit the renowned but unorthodox Dr. Gomez, a fitting choice, since Rose's ailment is baffling to everyone, including Sofia. While in Almer a, Sofia experiences an awakening: she meets the alluring Ingrid, gets stung by jellyfish, and becomes bolder in the face of her mother's oppressiveness. There is light mystery in the beautiful locale involving some potentially dangerous characters, and the story might be best described as The Magus as written by Lorrie Moore. But it's Sofia's frantic, vulnerable voice that makes this novel a singular read. Her offbeat and constantly surprising perspective treats the reader to writing such as "we dressed as though there weren't a dead snake in the room" and "unfinished hotels... had been hacked into the mountains like a murder." Levy has crafted a great character in Sofia, and witnessing a pivotal point in her life is a pleasure.
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