Every so often you read a book whose author has so acutely captured the human condition in all its anxiety fuelled, confused glory, it’s almost painful to read – like holding a mirror up to your own imperfect self.
Deborah Levy has done this and yet manages to elicit a sense of catharsis too – it’s OK, we’re all in the same leaky lifeboat.
Her narrator is 25-year-old half Greek, half Yorkshire anthropology student and barista Sofia Papastergiadis, whose father has a new baby with a much younger woman in Athens and mother, Rose, has a mysterious paralysis of the legs, among other ‘symptoms’.
Mother and daughter are in Spain, where Rose has spent a small fortune to be seen by a private doctor, Gomez. He gives Sofia permission to leave her mother’s side so she swims in the sea – and is stung by jellyfish, attracting the attentions of a lifeguard – and meets Ingrid, a Berlin seamstress, with whom she begins a tempestuous affair.
In just over 200 pages, Levy, who was Booker shortlisted for Swimming Home, deftly deals with the pull-push of mother-daughter bonds, identity, emerging sexuality, and the financial crisis. All while expertly evoking all the physical – and emotional – sensations Sofia is experiencing.
It’s enough to put you in a state of mindfulness.
Published by Hamish Hamilton