Published in 2016
220 pages
Deborah Levy is the author of five novels: Beautiful Mutants, Swallowing Geography, The Unloved, Billy and Girl and the Man Booker-shortlisted Swimming Home. Her short-story collection, Black Vodka, was nominated for the Frank O’Conner International Short Story Award and was broadcast on BBC Radio 4, as were her acclaimed dramatizations of Freud’s iconic case studies Dora and The Wolfman. Levy has written for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and her pioneering theatre writing is collected in Levy: Plays 1. Levy was an AHRB Fellow at the Royal College of Art. She is currently writing the sequel to her autobiographic essay on writing, gender politics and philosophy, Things I Don’t Want to Know.
What is this book about?
Sofia, a young anthropologist, has spent much of her life trying to solve the mystery of her mother’s unexplainable illness. She’s frustrated with Rose and her constant complaints but utterly relieved to be called to abandon her own disappointing fledgling adult life. She and Rose travel to the searing, arid coast of southern Spain to see a famous consultant, Dr. Gomez—their very last chance—in the hope that he might cure Rose’s unpredictable limb paralysis, but Dr. Gomez has strange methods that seem to have little to do with physical medicine, and as the treatment progresses, Rose’s illness becomes increasingly baffling. Sofia’s role as detective—tracking Rose’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.
