Carregando
Dados do livro
Hot Milk
De Deborah Levy
Ações de livro
Comece a lerDescrição
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, Hot Milk moves "gracefully among pathos, danger, and humor” (The New York Times).
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.
Shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, Hot Milk moves "gracefully among pathos, danger, and humor” (The New York Times).
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.
Ações de livro
Comece a lerDados do livro
Hot Milk
De Deborah Levy
Descrição
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, Hot Milk moves "gracefully among pathos, danger, and humor” (The New York Times).
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.
Shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, Hot Milk moves "gracefully among pathos, danger, and humor” (The New York Times).
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.
Sobre o autor
Avaliações
Hot Milk is the story of Sofia and her mother, Rose. Rose has a condition which may or may not be psychosomatic and is unable to walk (except when she isn’t). Sofia, with her hard-to-pronounce Greek name and her absent Greek father, her high level of education and low level of employability, has walked away from her own life to do the co-dependant’s dance around her mother. But her own behaviour is less than predictable.There are so many things to love about Hot Milk. First, the setting. I spent some time in Almeria and the story perfectly captures the strange, remote quality of the place, the extreme landscape and the unlikeliness of a resort in such a harsh climate, the international cocktail of outsiders who wash up there, who are so different but just in being there, become somehow the same.Like the shimmering heat of Almeria, there is a languid surface to the story which belies the simmering of ideas and themes. This is a story about individuals, about mother and daughter, about the spiky Sofia who will neither conform nor rebel but is always disrupting her own dreams. It is also about the unravelling of Europe. It deconstructs what we are sure about, shows us that the world we think is fixed is in flux. Spain and Greece, once at the heart of Mediterranean civilisations, are now on the periphery. It poses playful questions about the body politic and the willingness or otherwise to take your medicine.This is a clever book, cool, ironic, provocative (and the narrator of the audiobook captures this tone perfectly). Whenever I think about it, I see something new.
Rating: 5Woozy, sunny, sexy but unsatisfying. Conjures a mood but probably won’t stay with me for long..
Rating: 3I wasn't sure what this book was going to be about, and now I've read I'm not even sure I can explain it well. At a plot level, Sophie is a young woman spending the summer months in Almeria in Spain caring for her mother whilst they try to get a diagnosis for a mystery psychosomatic condition that affects her ability to walk. However, this novel is really about emotion, and the change that being amongst these new surroundings and unexpected people brings.This novel really worked for me. Levy establishes not only an acute sense of place, but also manages to evoke so well the heightened senses that Sophie experiences from her physical and emotional environment. It's a melting pot of inescapable heat, of noise (from the dog at the diving school that's perpetually chained up), of pain (from repetitive jelly fish stings), of complex sensuality and of rising frustration from being carer to a mother who's determined to suffer and not find any enjoyment of life. The pressure from these elements steadily increases until they result in a new emergence in Sophie, one where she is bolder in calling out those in her life for what they really are, and where she seeks to experience without needing to understand or to know where any of it is heading. I think an onslaught on the senses is very difficult to convey in a novel, but Levy nails it in Hot Milk. I know some people think this is a hugely overrated novel, but I think it's for this exact achievement that it has earned its plaudits. There was a tinge of Anita Brookner for me in this novel, but with more light at the end of the tunnel than Brookner normally allows.A great read. I felt the movement from Almeria to Athens for a short part of the novel broke the spell a little, so for that I'm taking away half a star, but hugely enjoyably otherwise.4.5 stars - powerfully emotive.
Rating: 5A bit all over the place.
Rating: 2I feel a bit silly giving this two stars because two stars could be considered a bad rating, but as per goodreads' definition of two stars: 'it was ok.'
After a frustrating start with what I wasn't sure was bad editing due to the repetition of some sentences, or a literary device, and because I wasn't sure if the character was autistic or something, this book held my interest until the end. Mostly because I was reading it to learn as a writer.
As I was reading it I knew there was a lot of metaphor and mythology woven through it that was probably going over my head, so that's another reason I feel silly giving it a low grading. I'm sure someone knowledgable on Greek mythology and history would get a lot out of this book. It's obvious that Deborah Levy is a very intelligent and competent person. I liked a lot of individual sentences and descriptions.
Interestingly, I had just finished an Irish book before reading this, and the mother seemed very Irish to me - Okay I've changed my rating to 3 stars, cause I know it's the kind of book that will make me remember it and appreciate it more in memory.
If you're into greek mythology and psychological relationships, and anthropology, and also if you're a writer I recommend this book to you. If you're not, and you've given books similar ratings to what I've given them (go compare), I don't recommend it. I think this book is destined to have very mixed reviews, but will be re-printed for the forseeable future.
Rating: 3After a frustrating start with what I wasn't sure was bad editing due to the repetition of some sentences, or a literary device, and because I wasn't sure if the character was autistic or something, this book held my interest until the end. Mostly because I was reading it to learn as a writer.
As I was reading it I knew there was a lot of metaphor and mythology woven through it that was probably going over my head, so that's another reason I feel silly giving it a low grading. I'm sure someone knowledgable on Greek mythology and history would get a lot out of this book. It's obvious that Deborah Levy is a very intelligent and competent person. I liked a lot of individual sentences and descriptions.
Interestingly, I had just finished an Irish book before reading this, and the mother seemed very Irish to me - Okay I've changed my rating to 3 stars, cause I know it's the kind of book that will make me remember it and appreciate it more in memory.
If you're into greek mythology and psychological relationships, and anthropology, and also if you're a writer I recommend this book to you. If you're not, and you've given books similar ratings to what I've given them (go compare), I don't recommend it. I think this book is destined to have very mixed reviews, but will be re-printed for the forseeable future.
I really enjoyed this odd book for the writing, the portrayal of relationships and feelings, and the sensual detail. To review it properly I think I'd need to reread it - there's a lot going on beneath the surface.
Rating: 5I was excited to read this book, but almost immediately felt like she was writing to win a prize and not writing to please the reader. Obviously the judges lapped up the milk, so to speak, because she is shortlisted for the Man Booker prize.
I understand that "literature" is a bit different than popular fiction, but when the symbolisms and deep meanings are shoe horned into a tale without regard to story or flow of narrative than I think something is lost.
Rating: 1I understand that "literature" is a bit different than popular fiction, but when the symbolisms and deep meanings are shoe horned into a tale without regard to story or flow of narrative than I think something is lost.
Poor stuff. Set in Andalucia. British girl with disabled mother seek treatment from Spanish-American doctor. His dog is called Jodo, which means "I fuck". No translation or comment on this; perhaps significant later in the story, but I stopped reading when the Spanish speakers start uttering Italian. We get "pulpo" and "polpo" on same page. Ignorant or careless? At least in good company: D H Lawrence did the same in his Mexican travel book.
Rating: 1This book is narrated by Sophie, a half-Greek anthropology student who has given up a doctorate to care for her English mother. Her mother's paralysis has baffled several British doctors so she has rented a house in Spain where she can be treated by Dr. Gomez, a man who is supposed to be able to treat her mysterious illness. While Sophie spends her days at the beach waiting for her mother, she meets Ingrid, a girl from Berlin, whom she initially mistakes for a man. She also meets Ingrid's American boyfriend, Matthew, as well as Juan, a man who treats her jellyfish stings and becomes her lover. After a while Sophie decides to visit her absent father in Greece where she meets his young wife and her new baby sister. The book is narrated by Sophie and has a vague dreamlike quality about it. Shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, this book is receiving glowing reviews from everyone. I'm sure they are well deserved. Maybe I had too high of an expectation based on those reviews because I just didn't really like either the story or the characters, with the exception of Dr. Gomez. I found it dull, depressing and very difficult to connect with. I'm sure I'm in the minority but the best part of the book for me was when I finally closed the cover.
Rating: 3Hot Milk is the story of Sophie and her varied relationships. It is about the dysfunction in her relationship with each of her parents, and about the dysfunction of love. It's magical and dreamlike.While it said things to me that I recognised and agreed with, I didn't think it a groundbreaking book or a novel of great significance. It has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, which is why I read it, but I don't think it will win.
Rating: 3I described this book to my husband as "everything people don't like about literary fiction in 218 pages." It felt self-consciously artsy to me, all style and no substance, with ultimately little to say. This is the second time I've felt this way about Levy's work; apparently the Booker judges see something in her that I simply don't.
Rating: 2A haunting, enigmatic and dreamlike story analysing a daughter's relationship with her mother and the damage they inflict on one another. On the surface not much happens - Sofia accompanies her mother Rose to a desert beach resort in Spain where they attend a local clinic to find the mysterious ailment that prevents her mother walking, and has various affairs interspersed with a visit to her Greek father and his new family. The surface story is insignificant but full of symbolic resonances. Like Ali Smith, Levy is very perceptive at identifying connections, and her characters are fully realised, and she fully inhabits their psychological dilemmas. I am struggling to convey what is great about this book and why I enjoyed it - it is full of striking sentences and observations, often slippery and cryptic, but never hard to read, and it would make a worthy Booker winner. I will certainly be reading more Levy.
Rating: 5Sophia Papastergiadis and her mother, Rose, travel from their home in Yorkshire to Carboneras, Spain to consult a Dr Gomez who in a last ditch effort may finally find the cause and treatment for Rose's inability to walk. Sophia is certainly more than a barista and grad school drop out but her mother's infliction's become her infliction's and she is stifled by the chain that controls her. Wise Dr/Mr. Gomez advises Sophia to busy herself while he treats her mother and it is during these excursions that Sophia meets a new circle of friends. She begins to question her identity and what she wants to make of her life. As she discovers what's going on with her mother her eyes are opened but one wonders just how long this will last.I thought this novel sharp, comical and bitingly witty. Great characters, lovely setting and a very good summer read.
Rating: 4
Great introspective read that you appreciate so much more when you've turned the last page.
Rating: 5Twenty-five year old Sofia Papasterdiadis is half Greek, half English. She has a master's degree in Anthropology, works in a London coffee shop and is struggling with her doctoral thesis. Her life has been put on hold so she can travel to a clinic in southern Spain with her mother, Rose, who is afflicted with an unpredictable limb paralysis amongst other complaints. In the coastal city of Almería she swims with the stinging jellyfish, frees a dog, takes a male and a female lover, and walks the dry landscape whilst her mother seeks a magical cure at the Gómez Clinic. Caring for her mother all this time has been a soul-destroying task, nothing is ever good enough, especially the water, and Sofia finds herself adopting her mothers symptoms, such as her limp. The disconnected hallucination-like storyline underpins Sofia's passive yet rage-filled journey of self-discovery in this anthropological story. We don't find out the results of her mother's endoscopy and the diagnosis of oesophageal cancer until the poignant end of the story.
Rating: 4Sofia Papastergiadis cannot speak Greek. Her Greek father abandoned her English mother when she was a child. She hasn’t seen him since she was 14. Instead, her whole life has been about her mother, Rose, who initially kept the wolf from their door but has for many years now suffered from an inexplicable ailment. Rose can’t walk. Mostly. Most of the time. And though Rose constantly asks for water, Sofia seems to be always bringing her the wrong kind. Sofia doesn’t just bring Rose water. She does everything for her. She is, she thinks, her mother’s legs. But all of that might change. Having exhausted the resources and patience of the NHS, Rose has mortgaged their house in order to raise the fee for a private clinic on the south of Spain. Here she will either discover what ails her, or give up her quest. Meanwhile, Sofia is undergoing her own crisis of identity. With a suspended Ph.D. dissertation in Anthropology on the subject of cultural memory lurking in her shattered laptop, Sofia has been making ends meet by working at an artisan coffee shop in London, living in the spare room above the store. It’s time to bring about a bit of metamorphosis.Deborah Levy’s story begins straightforwardly with a broken laptop screen and a painful sting from a jellyfish, or medusa in Spanish. Sofia is seemingly set upon by the elements, bad luck, and aggressively painful animal life. But very quickly we realize that Sofia’s take on things might be skewed. She sees with the eyes of an anthropologist, but also in the mythic mode, perhaps hearkening back to her Greek roots. Will Ingrid, the steamy seamstress, or Juan, from the healing hut, activate her desire or snuff it out? And what’s up with this strange clinic that Rose is going to where the doctor is becoming less and less interested in her lack of mobility? Everything begins to fold in on itself until nothing is merely what it is. It’s a brilliant metaphor for the involutions of the inner life. And it makes reading this novel a real treat.Recommended.
Rating: 4This book on the short list for the 2016 Man Booker Prize isn’t my cup of tea. I found the characters absurd and frustrating.
Rating: 3In Deborah Levy’s novel Hot Milk, 25-year-old Sofia Papastergiadis has accompanied her mother, Rose, to a town on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, in search of a cure for the chronic and crippling paralysis that has afflicted Rose for some years. Sofia, with a half finished degree in anthropology, works as a barista and, as she freely admits, has no life of her own: her desires and ambitions having been for years swallowed up by Rose’s endless needs, demands and expectations, which are in turn driven by a mysterious ailment that has confounded the doctors they’ve consulted at home in England. At the Gómez Clinic, Rose endures examinations and various treatments while Sofia is cut loose for once to do as she likes. She goes to the beach to swim, is stung by a jellyfish, and is treated at the injury tent by Juan, whom she takes as a lover. She befriends Ingrid Bauer, a German living in Spain (who endearingly calls her “Zoffie”), and the two form a close physical, if not exactly trusting, bond. All the while she speculates about her mother’s tyrannical hold over her and her own willingness to submit to it, and wonders about her non-existent relationship with her Greek father. Just past the midpoint of the novel, she flies to Athens to visit her father—who (at 69) is living with his new wife Alexandra, who is 29, and their newborn, Sofia’s half-sister Evangeline. By Sofia’s reckoning her father is a wealthy man (he runs a shipping company), yet the apartment is modest and for her stay of several days she is offered a folding bed in a storage closet with no windows. Sofia leaves Athens—a city suffering the effects of Eurozone austerity measures—with no more insight into her father than she had when she arrived. Sofia is something of an emotional vagabond and someone who accepts the things that happen to her and only rarely makes any kind of effort to assert herself. Her sole act of defiance in the novel comes when she smashes a vase, an impulsive and symbolic act that occurs when her resentment of her mother’s manipulative exploitation boils over, but also makes plain (given her lack of resources) her powerlessness to do anything about it. In Hot Milk, Deborah Levy has written an emotionally powerful, penetrating, often perplexing and unapologetically enigmatic novel centring on the interior life of a young woman stymied by circumstance. It is written in prose that achieves the paradoxical by being sensually vivid and hallucinatory at the same time. In these pages, Sofia Papastergiadis discovers a number of uncomfortable truths about herself and her mother, and we leave her wondering if these discoveries will be enough to finally propel her to make the necessary changes to her life.
Rating: 3Sofia Papastergiadis is a 25 year old woman who has completed bachelor's and master's degrees in anthropology, and she is reading for her doctoral disseration while she works in a café in West London and cares for her mother Rose, who is afllicted with a mysterious illness that has left her unable to walk. Rose treats "Sophie" more like a servant than her only child, and both are embittered by the absence of Rose's Greek husband Christos, who has completely abandoned them after he inherited a fortune and married a woman barely older than Sofia. In a last ditch effort to find a cure to Rose's illness, the two travel to a clinic in southern Spain run by a former orthopaedic surgeon who Rose located on the Internet.As Rose falls under the care of the eccentric Dr. Gómez, Sofia explores the coastal city of Almería, where she befriends Ingrid, an equally eccentric and attractive German woman who she finds enthralling and alluring. Sophie undergoes a personal and sexual transformation, which leads her to examine her life as her mother's poorly treated handmaid, discover her own personal desires, and seek reconciliation with the father who she has not seen or heard from in over a decade. I was looking forward to reading Hot Milk, as I was expecting a nuanced story of a difficult mother-daughter relationship, and a thoughtful look into the mind of a person with a chronic non-organic illness. Instead, this book was far more superficial, essentially an upscale chick lit novel, which left me disappointed and thoroughly unsatisfied. It was a curious selection for this year's Booker Prize longlist, and, similar to The Many, I don't expect to see it make the shortlist.
Rating: 3Hot Milk is not a perfect novel, by any means, but it can be quite enjoyable. It's disjointed and quirky, but these are features that can be endearing for some readers. Others may be put off by it. This is the first book I have read by Deborah Levy, so I'm not sure if this dream-like prose is indicative of her style, but after finishing Hot Milk I was immediately ready for more.There's a very ethereal quality that runs throughout the novel, but it's all quite subtle. Some readers will likely feel “things are off,” but not necessarily be able to put words to any of it. In an early scene, for instance, the protagonist and her mother are in a doctor's office. The doctor's front teeth are made of gold. There's a stuffed monkey in a glass case. The mother begins to cough. The doctor coughs. She moves her leg and the doctor moves his. After a strange exchange, the doctor randomly announces, “I think you are going to sneeze soon.” None of it is Twin Peaks Red-Room kind-of-crazy, but it's all so peculiar. The novel is filled with these moments and also a dialogue that is unnatural. It's intriguing, but what's the point?Levy seems to be addressing several different themes in Hot Milk, but doesn't explain them. Perhaps she expects her readers to be smarter than they are. Or perhaps she doesn't feel the need for the answers to be obvious. Though there is strong emphasis on gender confusion, the primary subject is memory. This likely explain the dream-like quality of the novel. One character states, “memory is a bomb.” At another point, the protagonist ruminates on “the way imagination and reality tumble together and mess things up.” Simple events like observing that her father was partial to dill is followed by a reflection that this observation “will become a memory.” There is so much emphasis put on imagination and dreams, matched with the surreal plot, and one may assume that this story isn't what it seems to be. But then what is it? That answer is never obvious.I enjoyed the unknown. I respected the author's right to tell her story in a slightly off-kilter manner. Other readers won't be so forgiving and so Hot Milk becomes the sort of novel that some will love, some will hate, and many will just shake their heads at and say, “huh?”Levy is a favorite for the Man Booker Prize and for good reason. Not only has she written a wonderful novel, but she's the most accomplished of the nominees. The author of seven novels, several collections, a work of non-fiction, and many plays, Levy has won numerous awards and was previously shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2012. If the Man Booker was judged by the same standards as the Academy Awards, Levy would be a shoo-in. Fortunately, the Man Booker Prize judges do not have a history of awarding the most culturally significant author or the one who was slighted the last time; they tend to award the prize to the most deserving book. And while Hot Milk is a fine novel, I'm not sure it has the universality and depth necessary to take home the prize. It's certainly possible, and I'd say its odds are much higher than the other two nominees I have so far read—Eileen and The Sellout—but in a world that seems to be simultaneously on the brink of destruction and enlightenment, the winner needs to offer something more. So far, Hot Milk is my favorite to take the prize, but there is still half the field of contenders to consider.
Rating: 5