Hot Milk (Levy)

Hot Milk 
Deborah Levy, 2016
Bloomsbury USA
224 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781620406694


Summary
I have been sleuthing my mother's symptoms for as long as I can remember. If I see myself as an unwilling detective with a desire for justice, is her illness an unsolved crime? If so, who is the villain and who is the victim?

Sofia, a young anthropologist, has spent much of her life trying to solve the mystery of her mother's unexplainable illness. She is frustrated with Rose and her constant complaints, but utterly relieved to be called to abandon her own disappointing fledgling adult life.

She and her mother travel to the searing, arid coast of southern Spain to see a famous consultant—their very last chance—in the hope that he might cure her unpredictable limb paralysis.

But Dr. Gomez has strange methods that seem to have little to do with physical medicine, and as the treatment progresses, Sofia's mother's illness becomes increasingly baffling. Sofia's role as detective—tracking her mother's symptoms in an attempt to find the secret motivation for her pain—deepens as she discovers her own desires in this transient desert community.

Hot Milk is a profound exploration of the sting of sexuality, of unspoken female rage, of myth and modernity, the lure of hypochondria and big pharma, and, above all, the value of experimenting with life; of being curious, bewildered, and vitally alive to the world. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1959
• Where—South Africa
• Education—Dartington College of Arts
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK


Deborah Levy, born in South Africa, is is a British playwright, novelist, and poet. Her work has been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company and she is the author of several novels including, Swimming Home and Hot Milk, both of which were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Life
Levy's father was a member of the African National Congress and an academic and historian. The family emigrated to Wembley Park, in 1968. Her parents divorced in 1974.

Work
Levy trained at Dartington College of Arts, leaving in 1981 to write a number of plays, including Pax, Heresies for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and others which are published in Levy: Plays 1 (Methuen).  She also served as director and writer for Manact Theatre Company in Cardiff, Wales.

Her first novel Beautiful Mutants, came out in 1986; her second, Swallowing Geography, in 1993; and her third, Billy and Girl, in 1996.

Swimming Home, her 2011 novel, was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. It was also shortlisted for the UK Author of the Year prize at the 2012 Specsavers National Book Awards and for the 2013 Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize.

Levy published a short story collection, Black Vodka, which was shortlisted for the BBC International Short Story Award 2012, and in 2016 she released her fourth novel, Hot Milk, which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

She has always written across a number of art forms (including collaborations with visual artists) and was a Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1989 to 1991. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/24/2014.)

Book Reviews
Deborah Levy's gorgeous new novel, Hot Milk…is a tale of how Sofia uses strength of will, rigorous self-examination and her anthropological skills to understand and begin to repair things that are holding her back.... It's a pleasure to be inside Sofia's insightful, questioning mind…. Ms. Levy has set a seemingly simple story against a backdrop thrumming with low-key menace and sly, dry humor, sometimes in the same paragraph.... As a series of images, the book exerts a seductive, arcane power, rather like a deck of tarot cards, every page seething with lavish, cryptic innuendo. Yet, as a narrative it is wanting.... The symbols here, although entrancing individually, feel at once overdetermined and underpurposed. They never fully ­cohere into a satisfying web.
Sarah Lyall - New York Times


In Hot Milk—think of mother's milk, the milk of human kindness, spoiled milk, "long-life milk" processed to last in hot climates and the breast-shaped marble dome of the Gomez Clinic—Levy has spun a web of violent beauty and poetical ennui. As a series of images, the book exerts a seductive, arcane power, rather like a deck of tarot cards, every page seething with lavish, cryptic innuendo.
Leah Hager Cohen - New York Times Book Review


Levy’s language is precise. The absurdities of her style seem scattershot at first, but yield a larger pattern: a commentary on debt and personal responsibility, family ties and independence.
Washington Post


A powerful novel of the interior life, which Levy creates with a vividness that recalls Virginia Woolf . . . Transfixing.
Erica Wagner - Guardian (UK)

Exquisite prose.... Hot Milk is perfectly crafted, a dream-narrative so mesmerising that reading it is to be under a spell. Reaching the end is like finding a piece of glass on the beach, shaped into a sphere by the sea, that can be held up and looked into like a glass-eye and kept, in secret, to be looked at again and again.
Suzanne Joinson - Independent (UK)


Among the questions posed in this heady new novel: Is Sofia's mother, Rose, sick or a hypochondriac who's feverish for attention? And more important, can the frustrated Sofia break the chains of familial devotion and live for herself?
Oprah Magazine


Highbrow/Brilliant. [An] intensely interior but highly charged new novel about family, hypochondria, Spain, Greece, and all kinds of sex.
New York Magazine


Hot Milk is a complicated, gorgeous work.
Marie Claire


A superbly crafted novel that is an inherently fascinating and consistently compelling read from beginning to end, Hot Milk clearly reveals author Deborah Levy as an exceptionally gifted storyteller
Midwest Book Review


The author of the elusive, powerful novel Swimming Home has another tale of family dysfunction. In the unforgiving heat of southern Spain, wayward anthropologist Sofia Papastergiadis delivers her mother into the hands of an eccentric doctor whom they hope can diagnose the mysterious illness that has taken over her body.
Elle.com


(Starred review.) 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.”... Levy has crafted a great character in Sofia, and witnessing a pivotal point in her life is a pleasure.
Publishers Weekly


The claustrophobic, all-encompassing dysfunction of Sofia's self-involved circle of friends and family is wrapped in the oppressive heat of Spain and the narrowing possibilities that she can (or wants to) break free. [Hot Milk] draws in readers with beautiful language and unexpected moments of humor and shock.  —Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Kinship, gender, Medusas—this rich new novel from a highly regarded British writer dazzles and teases with its many connections while exposing the double-edged sword of mother-daughter love.... In her scintillating, provocative new book, Levy combines intellect and empathy to impressively modern effect.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for Hot Milk...then take off on your own:

1. Readers meet Sofia just when she's dropped her laptop: "My laptop has all my life in it,” she says. “If it is broken, so am I." In what way is Sofia broken—and Just how broken is she?

2. How would you describe Sofia's mother Rose? Of course, it's hard to describe her without dissecting the mother/daughter relationship. How would you describe their bond (or perhaps in Sofia's case, bondage)?

3. Sofia observes of herself:

I am living a vague, temporary life in the equivalent of a shed on the fringe of a village. What has stopped me from building a two-story house in the center of the village?

Care to comment on that thought? What has stopped Sofia? Does her imagined "shed" hold any relevance to your life?

4. In what way might both Sofia and her mother be considered unreliable characters? How about Dr. Gomez? Is he unreliable...or simply unorthodox? Perhaps a little of both?

5. Talk about the setting of the story: Almeria, Spain, where the sea is oily and filled with stinging jelly fish, and the land is "wind-beaten and sun-baked,...cracked and dry.” In what way, if at all, does this inhospitable landscape shape the characters and their actions? Did the atmosphere lead to a sense of menace or dread while reading the novel?

6. During her stay in Spain, Sofia is stung, repeatedly, by Medusas. What is the symbolic significance of the Spanish name for jellyfish? What are the connections to Greek mythology?

7. Consider, too, the title and its significance. What might milk suggest...or hot milk at that?

8. What is behind Sofia's often risky behavior: stealing a fish, freeing a dog, smashing a vase, and taking one rather casual lover then another lover?

9. Gradually, Sofia begins to repair her life. Describe the process, or individual steps, that transform her. Consider, for instance, her anthropological skills: how does she put them to use in her life?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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