Hot Milk

Hot Milk

Summary

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2016
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2016

Plunge into this hypnotic tale of female sexuality and power - from the author of Swimming Home and The Man Who Saw Everything


'Propulsive, uncanny, dreamlike. A feverish coming-of-age novel' Daily Telegraph

'A triumph of storytelling' Literary Review

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'Today I dropped my laptop on the concrete floor of a bar built on the beach. My laptop has all my life in it and knows more about me than anyone else. So what I am saying is that if it is broken, so am I . . .'

Two women arrive in a village on the Spanish coast. Rose is suffering from a strange illness and the doctors are mystified. Her daughter Sofia has brought her here to find a cure with the infamous and controversial Dr Gomez - a man of questionable methods and motives. Intoxicated by thick heat and the seductive people who move through it, both women begin to see their lives clearly for the first time in years.

Through the opposing figures of mother and daughter, Deborah Levy explores the strange and monstrous nature of womanhood. Dreamlike and utterly compulsive, Hot Milk is a delirious fairy tale of feminine potency, a story both modern and timeless.
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'Perfectly crafted. So mesmerising that reading it is to be under a spell' Independent on Sunday

'Hot Milk treads a sweaty, sun-drenched path into the history books. A properly great novel'
Romola Garai

'Hot Milk is an extraordinary novel, beautifully rich, vividly atmospheric and psychologically complex... Every man and woman should read it'
Bernardine Evaristo

'Hypnotic... This novel has a transfixing gaze and a terrible sting that burns long after the final page is turned'
Observer

'Terrific, sizzling with heat and sexuality . . . You devour it in one sitting'
Radio Times

Reviews

  • Unsettling, challenging and gloriously written, Hot Milk by Deborah Levy is the multi-generational story of a hallucinatory sort of summer
    Juliet Nicolson, Evening Standard

About the author

Deborah Levy

Deborah Levy is the author of several novels including August Blue, Hot Milk and Swimming Home, alongside a formally innovative, critically acclaimed 'living autobiography' trilogy: Things I Don't Want to Know, The Cost of Living and Real Estate. She has been shortlisted twice each for the Goldsmiths Prize and Booker Prize and won the Prix Femina Etranger. She has also written for The Royal Shakespeare Company and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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