Fiction
HOT MILK
Deborah Levy
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Published: 2016
Pages: 218, paperback
We meet the heroine of Deborah Levy’s new novel ‘Hot Milk’ right after she drops her laptop on the floor, shattering its screen and thus her life, or so she feels. And you quickly realize she isn’t exaggerating when she says so because as you get to know the 25-year-old Sofia Papastergiadis better, you find there really isn’t much to her life that largely revolves around taking care of her mother’s petulant demands. In the novel, Sofia and her mother, Rose, have come to Spain in what is a final effort to find a cure for a universe of bizarre ailments (mostly imagined) that plague Rose. Sofia has her own set of ailments, most of which are psychological, and are probably a result of her terrible relationship with her mother. Back home in Britain, she is a barista, with a degree in anthropology and an abandoned PhD. Forever shadowed by her ungrateful mother, she has sort of stopped seeing her life as hers alone. But Hot Milk isn’t a story about sadness and lament, though there is plenty of that too.
At its heart, the book is basically about how Sofia fights the odds and, through her anthropological training, begins to examine her life and those around her, to undo the shackles that are holding her back and rebuild her life. As she learns to take risks, and behave however she wants to, she morphs into someone very unlike the Sofia you meet at the start who was just floating through life without much control over it. And it is this transformation that is so organic and, hence, believable, and which makes Hot Milk such a delightful read.
If you think it sounds like another coming-of-age story, you couldn’t be more wrong. Sofia is unlike any other character you have met and it feels wonderful to see the world through her eyes. She, in her weird ways, teaches you to look at life’s little wonders and take pleasure in them. Also, it helps that the language is beautifully crafted, making you want to reread certain passages over and over again.
Though Hot Milk isn’t a long novel, you will want to take your time with it because it’s almost like poetry, where each line can have many meanings and insinuations. And there’s a little bit of Greek myth thrown in, as an interesting side plot to an already wonderful narrative.
