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

Review

Unsettling, challenging and gloriously written, Hot Milk by Deborah Levy is the multi-generational story of a hallucinatory sort of summer (Juliet Nicolson, Evening Standard)

Leaves the reader enraptured and unnerved (Jackie Annesley, Evening Standard)

Publisher's description. Shortlisted for the Man Booker and Goldsmiths prizes, a hypnotic tale of female sexuality and power under the scorching midday sun. Sofia and her mother arrive on the Spanish coast looking for answers - what they find there will be strange, seductive and fearsome beyond their wildest dreams. (Penguin)

Vibrant...an intense, sun-drenched story. The prose veers dizzily between the poetic and the convoluted, spreading a hallucinatory patina of weirdness over everything. This is a writer for whom ordinary language just will not do. (The Times)

An extraordinary novel, beautifully rich, vividly atmospheric and psychologically complex. Every woman should read it (Bernardine Evaristo, author of MR LOVERMAN)

So mesmerising that reading it is to be under a spell...Sex suffuses the novel, with pleasure frequently crossing into pain (Independent on Sunday)

A smart, seductive and utterly beguiling read (Mail on Sunday)

Elegant and deeply strange [and] hummingly funny throughout (Spectator)

What makes the book so good is Ms. Levy's great imagination, the poetry of her language [and] moving gracefully among pathos, danger and humor (New York Times)

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

Edition details

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