Hot Milk - Hardcover

Levy, Deborah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241146542 ISBN 13: 9780241146545

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 2016

Synopsis

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2016

Plunge into this hypnotic tale of female sexuality and power - from the Man Booker shortlisted author of Swimming Home

Two women arrive in a village on the Spanish coast. Rose is suffering from a strange illness andher doctors are mystified. Her daughter Sofia has brought her here to find a cure with the infamous and controversial Dr Gomez - a man of questionable methods and motives. Intoxicated by thick heat and the seductive people who move through it, both women begin to see their lives clearly for the first time in years.

Through the opposing figures of mother and daughter, Deborah Levy explores the strange and monstrous nature of womanhood. Dreamlike and utterly compulsive, Hot Milk is a delirious fairy tale of feminine potency, a story both modern and timeless.

About this title

About the Author

Deborah Levy is a British playwright, novelist and poet. She is the author of six novels: Beautiful Mutants (1986); Swallowing Geography (1993); The Unloved (1994); Billy & Girl (1996); Swimming Home (2011); and Hot Milk (2016). Swimming Home was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 as well as the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize, and Hot Milk was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016 and the Goldsmiths Prize 2016. Deborah is also the author of a collection of short stories, Black Vodka (2013), which was shortlisted for the BBC International Short Story Award and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. She has written for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the BBC.

From the Back Cover

'Dreamlike [and] perfectly crafted... Reading it is to be under a spell. Reaching the end is like finding a piece of glass on the beach, that can be held up and looked into and kept, in secret, to be looked at again and again' Independent on Sunday

'A hot Attic sun glares down on Levy's novel, imbuing her mere mortals with a mythic dimension and exposing the monsters within. Maternal hysteria here is more toxic to a daughter who struggles to leave home and become woman than the floating medusas that choke the sea. Only Elena Ferrante writes of the seepages of illness and woman's identity in the family with equal insight. But Levy's prose is gleeful and punctuated by a scabrous wit. As gripping as it is illuminating, funny, and unputdownable, Hot Milk is a novel by a writer at the peak of her talents' Lisa Appignanesi

'Propulsive, disturbing, dreamlike... This feverish coming-of-age novel confirms the resurgence of its singular author' Daily Telegraph

From the Inside Flap

Sofia and her mother, Rose, arrive on the Spanish coast seeking help. Rose is the victim of a biological conspiracy: her legs have stopped working and no one can tell her why. Both women are desperate for the truth - but awaiting them in Almeria are many more questions than answers.

Almeria is a place caught between the desert and the deep blue sea. It is a place of shifting mirages and ghostly jellyfish floating in the evening tide, watched over by the famous Dr Gomez and his glamorous assistant, Nurse Sunshine. Simmering with hope and longing, Sofia has come seeking solutions, but the answers she finds are always to questions she had not thought to ask.

Under the unblinking glare of the desert sun, mother and daughter strain at the ragged boundaries of their relationship, testing the bonds of kinship to breaking point. Intoxicating and compulsively readable, Hot Milk unspools a hypnotic tale of female rage and sexuality, of myths and timeless monsters.

'Astute, poetic and wise, Hot Milk confirms Deborah Levy's reputation as a master of the contemporary psychological novel' Darian Leader

A HAMISH HAMILTON BOOK

Edition details

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241146542
• ISBN 13: 9780241146545
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224