"Hot Milk," by Deborah Levy

 “Hot Milk” by Deborah Levy has been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and it is a fascinating novel on many levels. We are examining and analyzing the mind of Sophia Papastergiadis, a woman in her early ‘twenties with a masters degree in anthropology, but who works in a London coffee bar and sleeps in a room above it. Her Greek father left her English mother, Rose, in her early childhood, and ever since then Sophia’s maturation has been overshadowed by trying to look after her mother, who in recent years has become paralysed (or is she?) and in chronic pain (psychosomatic?). Sophia researches her mother’s condition on the internet and comes up with the clinic of a Dr. Gomez (quack? charlatan?) on the southern coast of Spain, where they rent a small beach-side house in a rather run-down resort. Sophia and Rose have mortgaged her mother’s London house to pay the clinic’s fee. At the beach, the sea is generally full of Medusas--stinging jelly fish that attack Sophia on her first swim.

The novel begins very realistically with Sophia dropping her laptop in a bar and the screen shatters, somehow symbolizing Sophia’s state of mind as the novel progresses. And realism starts to mix with fantasy and the gyrations of Sohia's mind.

“My laptop has all my life in it and knows more about me than anyone else.”

And we are off on a strange story, as Sophia becomes strongly attracted and obsessed with Ingrid Bauer, a German seamstress who lives nearby, and she sleeps with Juan—the lifeguard who treats her jellyfish stings. And what of Dr. Gomez and his daughter: are they charlatans? Is there really any treatment offered to Rose, except to stop her taking all her medicines? And is it true that Rose sometimes actually walks?

Well, let’s not get into too much detail, I should just add that Sophia travels to Greece to meet her father and his new wife, who is some forty years younger than him and has a small baby that is being breast-fed…hot mother's milk.

Any novel short-listed for the Man Booker has been judged by the panel to be an exceptional work. That doesn’t mean you will like it, or like Sophia, but I found it a fascinating read and brilliantly written.

Here is a quote from a Guardian review by Erika Wagner:

“Hot Milk is a powerful novel of the interior life, which Levy creates with a vividness that recalls Virginia Woolf. The sense of Sofia’s life with her mother (or against her mother) is built through an accumulation of detail, a constellation of symbols and narrative bursts. But like a medusa, this novel has a transfixing gaze and a terrible sting that burns long after the final page is turned.”