Hot Milk

“My love for my mother is like an axe. It cuts very deep.”25 year old Sofia has travelled to the Spanish coast with her hypochondriac mother, Rose, to treat her at the clinic of Dr. Gomez. Rose has a mysterious paralysis that manifests as per her whim. Perplexed and frustrated in equal measure, Sofia's trip is a last-ditch effort to diagnose her mother with an affliction. But is Sofia prepared for the consequence?When I finished 'Hot Milk', I got the feeling that I understood most of it but not all. I listened to a few podcasts where Levy discussed the book. There were plenty of references and allusions that went over my head. Once she had explained, I retrospectively appreciated the craft of this novel.I have found Levy's fiction to operate on a wavelength that's beyond the abilities of a casual reader, including myself. She writes as though she has connected the dots herself but doesn't wish to do the same for the reader. You can debate if she ought to but it runs the risk of dissuading the reader. Levy wrote that she wanted to give space in her book to a protagonist who was 25 but had very little figured out; who was willing to experiment; who was lost and scared to start her own life; who was, at once, frustrated by her mother's neediness but lost without her own identity of a carer to her mother.In a Goodreads review, a reader wrote that when she had met Levy for the book signing, Levy wrote in her copy of 'Hot Milk', "Is Sofia bold enough at the end?" And this question, when used as a North Star, can help structure your reading of the novel a great deal.Levy's writing is quite powerful, evocative, and full of imagery. It can sometimes leave you behind but if you have the patience to fill in the gaps, you should be good. My overall feeling about Levy's fiction is that it deserves a second read for me to truly get it. But if I have to read it twice, or more, to understand it well, does it mean the author didn't do her job well?

What a stunning book ! Deborah Levy's words will stay with you.

If I had to be really accurate, and if Amazon did let me be accurate, I would have given this book 2.5 stars. I could have given it two, but that would be unfair.First, this book is about a couple of women who are neurotic. I couldn't really relate to them in anyway. This could be because I am a man and do not understand the psyche of a woman or because the development of the characters wasn't all that great.After having loved several neurotic female characters, the obvious reasoning tends towards the latter. I am however willing to give the benefit of doubt, and of half a star to the book (and thereby the author).The Plot: I gave up searching for a plot half way through the book. It Isn't the same as an Alexander McCall Smith's books where plotlessness is the plot. Here, it seems aimless.There was supposed to be some mystery. Let me tell you straight up there isn't. If you have read two books all your life, you can see the mystery coming from twenty two blocks away in the dark.There's a lot of sex and sexuality and it has been done well. There's language. That's beautiful too. There's the setting, that's heavenly.There are really good bits, but the overall lack of a plan takes it all away. This book is less than the sum of its parts.Ms Levy should have worked on it more and polished it up. But then, that's just my opinion.

It's a book about a mother daughter relationship. Both of them together in a new starnge foriegn country and how they relive their past in Almeria. The book is full of mundane details of their life in Spain. There is a plot of illness and cure, but that seems like a background noise in overall naration.

Nominated for The Man Booker's Prize in 2016, Hot Milk by Deborah Levy has been siting on my virtual shelf for over a year. I thought, before this year ends I should give it a go.With an interesting cover, the plot revolves around Sofia, a twenty five year old anthropologist, born to a British mother and a Greek father. She believes she has spent much of her life trying to solve the mystery of her mother's unexplainable illness. She is frustrated by her mother's constant complains and travels with her to the coast of souther Spain to see a famous consultant in the hope that he might be able to cure her mother's unpredictable limb paralysis. With doctor's strange methods, Sofia track while tracking down her mother's symptoms in an attempt to solve this msytery of her pain but along this journey that, she discovers her own desires, her sexual personality and coming on terms with herself.The storyline starts flat but as it moves forward it becomes interesting and enjoyable. It might take some readers to adjust with the plot but let me tell you this is one of the books where plot is secondary. This I realised after I was done with almost half of the book. The characters are the mai point of this book. These characters are always thinking and feeling. They develop on their own, some of them instantly and are interesting personalities. Whenever the author shifts focus from our protagonist I observed how intelligent the other characters in ths novel are.Moreover, one gets to see the transformation of some characters as the plot move forward. The writing style has a pace with it and I highly enjoyed the narrative. The writer has clearly captured the strangeness of a mother who demands attention from her child who is an adult. The element of this type complexity is explored through out the novel. The landscape described in the book is limited but I think it has high impact both on the readers of the book and the overall characterisation. I enjoyed reading Deborah Levy's work. She is now one of the those authors on my list that I have to explore and read their other published works. This book can be finished in a day as I managed to read. Something different, not your usual contemporary fiction.4 out of 5

Absolutely well deserved nomination for this book. The purpose is like an axe. They cut very deep!!!