HOT MILK

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"Sofia and her mother, Rose, arrive on the Spanish coast seeking help. Rose is the victim of a biological conspiracy - her legs have stopped working and no one can tell her why. Sofia has been wrestling with this mystery single-handed for years and she's desperate enough to call for back-up. But waiting in Almeria are many more questions than answers. Who is Ingrid Bauer, the seamstress, the seductress, the big bad sister? Why is someone vandalising the walls of the town with gaudy love letters? And what part must Sofia play in all this? Floating on the dusk tide among numberless ghostly jellyfish, she feels everything inside herself shattering apart in slow motion. It is the best thing that ever happened to her.a Almeria is a place caught between the desert and the deep blue sea. It's a place of shifting mirages, watched over by the famous Dr Gomez and his glamorous assistant, Nurse Sunshine. Sofia and Rose have come seeking solutions - but the answers they find are always to questions they had not thought to ask. Under the unblinking glare of the desert sun, mother and daughter strain at the ragged boundaries of their relationship, testing the bonds of kinship to breaking point. Intoxicating and compulsively readable,a Hot Milka unspools a hypnotic tale of female rage and sexuality, of myths and timeless monsters. "

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

  2015. Almería. Southern Spain. August.   Today I dropped my laptop on the concrete floor of a bar built on the beach. It was tucked under my arm and slid out of its black rubber sheath (designed like an envelope), landing screen side down. The digital page is now shattered but at least it still works. My laptop has all my life in it and knows more about me than any-one else.   So what I am saying is that if it is broken, so am I.   My screen saver is an image of a purple night sky crowded with stars, and constellations and the Milky Way, which takes its name from the classical Latin lactea . My mother told me years ago that I must write Milky Way like this - galaxi ´ aV ku ´ kloV - and that Aristotle gazed up at the milky circle in Chalcidice, thirty- four miles east of modern- day Thessaloniki, where my father was born. The oldest star is about 13 billion years old but the stars on my screen saver are two years old and were made in China. All this universe is now shattered.   There is nothing I can do about it. Apparently, there is a cybercafé in the next flyblown town and the man who owns it sometimes mends minor computer faults, but he'd have to send for a new screen and it will take a month to arrive. Will I still be here in a month? I don't know. It depends on my sick mother, who is sleeping under a mosquito net in the next room. She will wake up and shout, 'Get me water, Sofia,' and I will get her water and it will always be the wrong sort of water. I am not sure what water means any more but I will get her water as I understand it: from a bottle in the fridge, from a bottle that is not in the fridge, from the kettle in which the water has been boiled and left to cool. When I gaze at the star fields on my screen saver I often float out of time in the most peculiar way.   It's only 11 p.m. and I could be floating on my back in the sea looking up at the real night sky and the real Milky Way but I am nervous about jellyfish. Yesterday afternoon I got stung and it left a fierce purple whiplash welt on my left upper arm. I had to run across the hot sand to the injury hut at the end of the beach to get some ointment from the male student (full beard) whose job it is to sit there all day attending to tourists with stings. He told me that in Spain jellyfish are called medusas. I thought the Medusa was a Greek goddess who became a monster after being cursed and that her powerful gaze turned anyone who looked into her eyes to stone. So why would a jellyfish be named after her? He said yes, but he was guessing that the tentacles of the jellyfish resemble the hair of the Medusa, which in pictures is always a tangled mess of writhing snakes.   I had seen the cartoon Medusa image printed on the yellow danger flag outside the injury hut. She has tusks for teeth and crazy eyes.   'When the Medusa flag is flying it is best not to swim. Really it is at your own discretion.'   He dabbed the sting with cotton wool which he had soaked in heated- up seawater and then asked me to sign a form that looked like a petition. It was a list of all the people on the beach who had been stung that day. The form asked me for my name, age, occupation and country of origin. That's a lot of information to think about when your arm is blistered and burning. He explained he was required to ask me to fill it in to keep the injury hut open in the Spanish recession. If tourists did not have cause to use this service he would be out of a job, so he was obviously pleased about the medusas. They put bread in his mouth and petrol in his moped.   Peering at the form, I could see that the age of the people on the beach stung by medusas ranged from seven to seventy- four, and they mostly came from all over Spain but there were a few tourists from the UK and someone from Trieste. I have always wanted to go to Trieste because it sounds like tristesse, which is a light- hearted word, even though in French it means sadness. In Spanish it is tristeza, which is heavier than French sadness, more of a groan than a whisper.   I hadn't seen any jellyfish while I was swimming but the student explained that their tentacles are very long so they can sting at a distance. His forefinger was sticky with the ointment he was now rubbing into my arm. He seemed well informed about jellyfish. The medusas are transparent because they are 95 per cent water, so they camouflage easily. Also, one of the reasons there are so many of them in the oceans of the world is because of over- fishing. The main thing was to make sure I didn't rub or scratch the welts. There might still be jellyfish cells on my arm and rubbing the sting encourages them to release more venom, but his special ointment would deactivate the stinging cells. As he talked I could see his soft, pink lips pulsing like a medusa in the middle of his beard. He handed me a pencil stub and asked me to please fill in the form.   Name: Sofia Papastergiadis Age: 25 Country of origin: UK Occupation:   The jellyfish don't care about my occupation, so what is the point? It is a sore point, more painful than my sting and more of a prob-lem than my surname which no one can say or spell. I told him I have a degree in anthropology but for the time being I work in a café in West London - it's called the Coffee House and it's got free Wi- Fi and renovated church pews. We roast our own beans and make three types of artisan espresso . . . so I don't know what to put under 'Occupation'.   The student tugged at his beard. 'So do you anthropologists study primitive people?'   'Yes, but the only primitive person I have ever studied is myself.'   I suddenly felt homesick for Britain's gentle, damp parks. I wanted to stretch my primitive body flat out on green grass where there were no jellyfish floating between the blades. There is no green grass in Almería except on the golf courses. The dusty, barren hills are so parched they used to film Spaghetti Westerns here - one even starred Clint Eastwood. Real cowboys must have had cracked lips all the time because my lips have started to split from the sun and I put lipsalve on them every day. Perhaps the cowboys used animal fat? Did they gaze out at the infinite sky and miss the absence of kisses and caresses? And did their own troubles disappear in the mystery of space like they sometimes do when I gaze at the galaxies on my shattered screen saver?   The student seemed quite knowledgeable about anthropology as well as jellyfish. He wants to give me an idea for 'an original field study' while I am in Spain. 'Have you seen the white plastic structures that cover all the land in Almería?'   I had seen the ghostly white plastic. It stretches as far as the eye can see across the plains and valleys.   'They are greenhouses,' he said. 'The temperature inside these farms in the desert can rise to forty- five degrees. They employ illegal immigrants to pick the tomatoes and peppers for the supermarkets, but it's more or less slavery.'   I thought so. Anything covered is always interesting. There is never nothing beneath something that is covered. As a child, I used to cover my face with my hands so that no one would know I was there. And then I discovered that covering my face made me more visible because everyone was curious to see what it was I wanted to hide in the first place.   He looked at my surname on the form and then at the thumb on his left hand, which he started to bend, as if he were checking the joint was still working.   'You are Greek, aren't you?'   His attention is so unfocused it's unsettling. He never actually looks at me directly. I recite the usual: my father is Greek, my mother is English, I was born in Britain.   'Greece is a smaller country than Spain, but it can't pay its bills. The dream is over.'   I asked him if he was referring to the economy. He said yes, he was studying for a master's degree at the School of Philosophy at Granada University but he considered himself lucky to have a summer job on the beach at the injury hut. If the Coffee House was still hiring when he graduated, he would head for London. He didn't know why he had said the dream was over because he didn't believe it. He had probably read it somewhere and it stuck with him. But it wasn't his own opinion, a phrase like 'the dream is over.' For a start, who is the dreamer? The only other public dream he could remember was from Martin Luther King's speech 'I had a dream . . .', but the phrase about the dream being over implied that something had started and had now ended. It was up to the dreamer to say it was over, no one else could say it on their behalf.   And then he spoke a whole sentence to me in Greek and seemed surprised when I told him that I do not speak Greek.   It is a constant embarrassment to have a surname like Papastergiadis and not speak the language of my father.   'My mother is English.'   'Yes,' he said in his perfect English. 'I have only been to Skiathos in Greece once but I managed to pick up a few phrases.'   It was as if he was mildly insulting me for not being Greek enough. My father left my mother when I was five and she is English and mostly speaks to me in English. What did it have to do with him? And anyway the jellyfish sting was what he was supposed to be concerned about.   'I have seen you in the plaza with your mother.'   'Yes.'    'She has difficulty walking?'   'Sometimes Rose can walk, sometimes she can't.'   'Your mother's name is Rose?'   'Yes.'   'You call her by her name?'   'Yes.'   'You don't say Mama?'   'No.'   The hum of the little fridge standing in the corner of the injury hut was like something dead and cold but with a pulse. I wondered if there were bottles of water inside it. Agua con gas , agua sin gas . I am always thinking of ways to make water more right than wrong for my mother.   The student looked at his watch. 'The rule for anyone who has been stung is they have to stay here for five minutes. It's so I can check you don't have a heart attack or another reaction.'   He pointed again to 'Occupation' on the form, which I had left blank.   It might have been the pain of the sting, but I found myself telling him about my pathetic miniature life. 'I don't so much have an occupation as a preoccupation, which is my mother, Rose.'   He trailed his fingers down his shins while I spoke.   'We are here in Spain to visit the Gómez Clinic to find out what is actually wrong with her legs. Our first appointment is in three days' time.'   'Your mother has limb paralysis?'   'We don't know. It's a mystery. It's been going on for a while.'   He started to unwrap a lump of white bread covered in cling film. I thought it might be part two of the jellyfish- sting cure but it turned out to be a peanut- butter sandwich, which he said was his favourite lunch. He took a small bite and his black, glossy beard moved around while he chewed. Apparently, he knows about the Gómez Clinic. It is highly thought of and he also knows the woman who has rented us the small, rectangular apartment on the beach. We chose it because it has no stairs. Everything is on one floor, the two bedrooms are next to each other, just off the kitchen, and it is near the main square and all the cafés and the local Spar. It is also next door to the diving school, Escuela de Buceo y Náutica, a white cube on two floors with windows in the shape of portholes. The reception area is being painted at the moment. Two Mexican men set to work every morning with giant tins of white paint. A howling, lean Alsatian dog is chained all day to an iron bar on the diving- school roof terrace. He belongs to Pablo who is the director of the diving school, but Pablo is on his computer all the time playing a game called Infinite Scuba . The crazed dog pulls at its chains and regularly tries to leap off the roof.   'No one likes Pablo,' the student agreed. 'He's the sort of man who would pluck a chicken while it's still alive.'   'That's a good subject for an anthropological field study,' I said.   'What is?'   'Why no one likes Pablo.'   The student held up three fingers. I assumed that meant I had to stay in the injury hut for three more minutes.   In the morning, the male staff at the diving school give a tutorial to student divers about how to put on their diving suits. They are uneasy about the dog being chained up all the time, but they get on with the things they have to do. Their second task is to pour petrol through a funnel into plastic tanks and wheel them out on an electric device across the sand to load on to the boat. This is quite complicated technology compared to the Swedish masseur, Ingmar, who usually sets up his tent at the same time. Ingmar transports his massage bed on to the beach by attaching ping- pong balls to its legs and sliding it across the sand. He has complained to me personally about Pablo's dog, as if the accident of my living next door to the diving school means that I somehow co- own the miserable Alsatian. Ingmar's clients can never relax because the dog whines, howls, barks and tries to kill itself all through their aromatherapy massage.   The student in the injury hut asked me if I was still breathing.   I'm starting to think he wants to keep me here.   He held up a finger. 'You have to stay with me for one more minute, and then I will have to ask again how are you feeling.'   I want a bigger life.   What I feel most is that I am a failure but I would rather work in the Coffee House than be hired to conduct research into why customers prefer one washing machine to another. Most of the students I studied with ended up becoming corporate ethnographers. If ethnography means the writing of culture, market research is a sort of culture (where people live, the kind of environment they inhabit, how the task of washing clothes is divided between members of the community . . .) but in the end, it is about selling washing machines. I'm not sure I even want to do original fieldwork that involves lying in a hammock watching sacred buffalo grazing in the shade.   I was not joking when I said the subject of Why Everyone Hates Pablo would be a good field study.   The dream is over for me. It began when I left my lame mother alone to pick the pears from the tree in our East London garden that autumn I packed my bags for university. I won a first- class degree. It continued while I studied for my master's. It ended when she became ill and I abandoned my Ph.D. The unfinished thesis I wrote for my doctorate still lurks in a digital file behind my shattered screen saver like an unclaimed suicide.   Yes, some things are getting bigger (the lack of direction in my life), but not the right things. Biscuits in the Coffee House are getting bigger (the size of my head), receipts are getting bigger (there is so much information on a receipt, it is almost a field study in itself), also my thighs (a diet of sandwiches, pastries . . .). My bank balance is getting smaller and so are passion fruit (though pomegranates are getting bigger and so is air pollution, as is my shame at sleeping five nights of the week in the storeroom above the Coffee House). Most nights in London I collapse on the childish single bed in a stupor. I never have an excuse for being late for work. The worst part of my job is the customers who ask me to sort out their traveller's wireless mice and charging devices. They are on their way to somewhere else while I collect their cups and write labels for the cheesecake.   I stamped my feet to distract myself from the throbbing pain in my arm. And then I noticed that the halter- neck strap of my bikini top had broken and my bare breasts were juddering up and down as I stamped about. The string must have snapped when I was swimming, which means that when I ran across the beach and into the injury hut I was topless. Perhaps that is why the student did not know where to rest his eyes through our conversation. I turned my back on him while I fiddled with the straps.   'How are you feeling?'   'I'm okay.'   'You are free to leave.'   When I turned round, his eyes flickered across my newly covered breasts.   'You haven't filled in "Occupation".'   I took the pencil and wrote WAITRESS.   Excerpted from Hot Milk by Deborah Levy All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Sofia Papastergiadis, a 25-year-old waitress, is trapped in a go-nowhere life. The demands of her invalid mother, Rose, who is plagued by undiagnosed leg pains, stand in the way of Sofia pursuing a career in anthropology. The women have left England for the suffocating heat of southern Spain, where Rose places her faith in the dicey Gómez Clinic. While Rose is being "treated," Sofia drifts into uneasy relationships-one with Ingrid, a disturbed woman she meets in a restroom, and a more casual encounter with the student who treats her jellyfish stings. A brief empty visit in Greece with her long-estranged father and his new, much-younger family resolves before Sofia returns for the wrap-up of Rose's treatment. Verdict The claustrophobic, all-encompassing dysfunction of Sofia's self-involved circle of friends and family is wrapped in the oppressive heat of Spain and the narrowing possibilities that she can (or wants to) break free. The Man Booker short-listed Levy (Swimming Home and Other Stories) draws in readers with beautiful language and unexpected moments of humor and shock. [See Prepub Alert, 1/25/16.]-Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Is Donald Duck a child or hormonal teenager or an immature adult? Or is he all of those things at the same time, like I probably am?" These questions come from the memorable heroine of Booker-finalist Levy's (Swimming Home) novel: 25-year-old Sofia, who instead of pursuing her anthropology Ph.D. works in a coffee shop in London and spends much of her time caring for her sick and complaining mother, Rose. The two have traveled to arid Almería on Spain's southern coast to visit the renowned but unorthodox Dr. Gomez, a fitting choice, since Rose's ailment is baffling to everyone, including Sofia. While in Almería, Sofia experiences an awakening: she meets the alluring Ingrid, gets stung by jellyfish, and becomes bolder in the face of her mother's oppressiveness. There is light mystery in the beautiful locale involving some potentially dangerous characters, and the story might be best described as The Magus as written by Lorrie Moore. But it's Sofia's frantic, vulnerable voice that makes this novel a singular read. Her offbeat and constantly surprising perspective treats the reader to writing such as "we dressed as though there weren't a dead snake in the room" and "unfinished hotels... had been hacked into the mountains like a murder." Levy has crafted a great character in Sofia, and witnessing a pivotal point in her life is a pleasure. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Sofia's mother never likes the water Sofia brings her. It's one small example of how confining Sofia's life is as caretaker to her mother, who is troubled by mysterious ailments that come and go seemingly at random. So, in a last-ditch effort to get some answers, mother and daughter travel to an expensive clinic in Spain for treatment by a gregarious doctor. But the real questions in this mesmerizing novel are the larger ones Sofia has about her place in the world. Despite her training in anthropology (unused in her job at a coffee shop), Sofia is often left guessing at the motivations of others around her and even her own. She is at once trapped in a languorous, shiftless existence and pained by uncertainties as sharp as a jellyfish sting. Levy unravels Sofia's motivations through her interactions with sharply drawn characters of almost mythic proportions. It is an anthropologist's attention to the details in people's interactions, and a daughter's complicated efforts to free herself from her mother's needs, that make Hot Milk an evocative and complex novel.--Thoreson, Bridget Copyright 2016 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Kinship, gender, Medusasthis rich new novel from a highly regarded British writer dazzles and teases with its many connections while exposing the double-edged sword of mother-daughter love. Levy's (Things I Didn't Want to Know, 2014, etc.) latest work may read lightly but is in fact a closely woven fabric of allusions, verbal riffs, and cross-references reflecting the experiences and dilemmas of its narrator, Sofia Papastergiadis, born in Britain to an English mother, Rose, and a Greek father she hasn't seen in 11 years. Now 25, with a degree in anthropology, Sofia is living an empty, frustrated life since she abandoned her doctoral thesis to take care of Rose, whose many ailments include strange pains and mysteriously paralyzed lower limbs. The story opens in Almeria, Spain, where, at considerable expense, mother and daughter have gone to visit the Gmez Clinic in hopes of a cure for Rose. But is Rose really ill or a hypochondriac? Is Gmez a quack or a brilliant healer? Is Sofia a monster, as she and others refer to her, or a sexual powerhouseas she begins to seem after acting on Dr. Gmez's recommendation that she become bolder by taking two lovers, one male and one female. Levy's wit and fluency render her quicksilver, sometimes surreal narrative simultaneously farcical and fascinating. The new, bolder Sofia may act more decisivelyfreeing an abused dog, stealing a fish, visiting her father and his new family in Athensbut underneath she's lost and lonely, afraid of "failing and falling and feeling." Yet her need for a "bigger life" cannot be suppressed, leading to one final act of boldness that disruptsthough doesn't necessarily severthose tendrillike bonds holding her captive. In her scintillating, provocative new book, Levy combines intellect and empathy to impressively modern effect. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.