Hot Milk
Deborah Levy
[Penguin Random House]
Hypochondria, mothers and daughters, myth and Medusas: Deborah Levy’s beautiful novel, shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, is like a lucid dream. Darkly glittering with menace, sensuality and virulence, it holds a strange seductive power. It tells of Sophia, a 25-year old anthropology graduate working as a barista, who has come with her mother Rose to the eccentric Dr. Gomez’s clinic in sweltering Almería, in a last-ditch attempt to find a cure for Rose’s mysterious ailments, including legs which can sometimes walk and sometimes won’t.
At the novel’s core is a fabulous, deeply resonant exploration of the mother-daughter relationship, with its nuances of grief and dependency. Mother and daughter become the negative mirror of each other’s paralysis. This story will be exceptionally enjoyable for those who have not managed to come away unscathed from this most vital of bonds. It is up to Sophia, as the Hélène Cixous epigraph reads, to “break the old circuits” as the summer finds her reclaiming her desires and primal self to develop the courage and boldness to finally “live a bigger life”.
The book is rich in symbolism so dense as to be overdetermined. Some readers will enjoy teasing out interpretations; others will not. Despite grounding from themes related to the recent financial crisis, it is at times almost stiflingly introspective – but the book is devoted to the interior life and therein lie the conflicts and resolutions of its narrative arc. Masterly, unsentimental and insightful.
Words – Maryam Madani
