'If she was my double and I was hers,was it true that she was knowing,I was unknowing,she was sane,I was crazy,she was wise,I was foolish That summer,the air was electric between us as we transmitted our feelings to each other across three countries.'
Elsa M. Anderson is a classical piano virtuoso. In a flea market in Athens,she watches an enigmatic woman buy two mechanical dancing horses. Is it possible that the woman who is so enchanted with the horses is her living double Is she also looking for reasons to live
Chasing their doubles across Europe,the two women grapple with their preconceived conceptions of the world and each other,culminating in a final encounter in a fateful summer rainstorm.
A vivid portrait of a long-held identity coming apart,August Blue expands our understanding of the ways in which we seek to find ourselves in others and create ourselves anew.
Publisher: Penguin Books LtdISBN: 9780241421314Number of pages: 256Weight: 360 gDimensions: 218 x 144 x 32 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
Intelligent and absurd,precise and dream-like...I know of few other authors who can capture an atmosphere of the eerie and the bizarre as well as she doesAugust Blue holds the remarkable balancing act that is key to Levy's writing: perfect precision at the sentence level combined with a dedication to exploring the slipperiness of realityPlayful inquisitiveness and lush descriptions balance out a bassline of melancholy...Nobody does enigmatic like Levy(Levy) can sketch a scene with a few precise brushstrokes and conjure emotion out of white space on the page. A recurring call and response between Elsa and her alter ego becomes a musical refrain that takes on ever new colors. Those familiar references to swimming and bees glint through like leitmotifsA gleeful read...(Deborah Levy's) prose is as quick and bare as ever,her manner excitingly abrupt...You know you'll read August Blue againLevy's lyrical,pitch-perfect prose,where every word is weighted with significance,is an exploration of our reasons for living,the forces that drive us and the inner music that controls the rhythms of our dance through life and loveDeborah Levy's work inspires a devotion few literary authors ever achieveAugust Blue is Levy's eighth novel,and since her 20s,she has been refining her ability to evoke feeling through writing rather than to narrate it. Her work is deeply influenced by art forms that express the embodied experience,like cinema and dance...Levy's writing is psychologically complex(An) enigmatic novel...Deborah Levy's writing is rather like Philip Glass's music...mesmerising...enigmatic...refreshingly original(A) wistful,fabular new novel...Since the 1990s,Deborah Levy's novels have combined a gauzy,episodic quality with pinpoint sensual detail drawn from peripatetic lives,crossing fluently between languages and national borders. Her style is full of gaps and sharp edges,circling around questions of gender and power,inheritance,autonomy and lack...The narrative here has a fittingly musical quality,running forward in spurts,pausing,repeating key phrasesDeborah Levy's hazy,dreamlike novels,often set in sun-drenched Mediterranean backdrops,are an essential accompaniment to any summer holiday...a lyrical,surreal trip of self discovery - one that is full of Levy's wit and curious imagesA meditation on artistic creativity that is sensual,enigmatic and strangely addictiveLevy is no stranger to the uncanny. Her novels teem with oddness,with dreamlike,vertiginous scenesLevy's elegantly ludic investigation into selfhood,mother love and meaning
Deborah Levy
Deborah Levy is a British novelist,short story writer,playwright and poet,whose proficiency across multiple literary forms marks her out as one of the great contemporary literary figures. Levy has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize twice,for Swimming Home and Hot Milk.
Visit the Deborah Levy author page
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